Even though I lived in the US for a decade, it still surprises me to learn that certain words are Canadianisms. I wonder how often people had no idea what I was talking aboot and just didn't speak up.
Yes. Unless you are like me, you think you are good at inferring from context, never lookup a word in the dictionary and think for a few years it means something while it actually means the opposite.
It probably takes me a good seven to ten times of looking up a new-to-me word to really nail it down. As a result, a lot of my blog/personal writing is filled with odd phrasings of things because I never quite learned the prescriptive way of using said word.
1. https://www.thedictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/word/wollah