You learn something new every day...

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Yesterday, my sister and I had fish for dinner. Generally we have basa fillets because they're the cheapest at Coles, and when you chuck fish in a stew, the taste of the actual fish doesn't matter too much- it's lost amongst the broth, chilli and herbs.

Anyway, so we were scooping up the fish and I said:

"Are these basa fillets? They don't taste the same, hey?"

To which she said:

"Bizarre phallus? Wow that was quite clever of you to call the fish "Bizarre Phallus! You know what phallus is, right?"

To which I replied (perplexed):

"Naw I said basa fillet and I don't know what phallus is, anyway."

To which my sister mouthed the word that a phallus is otherwise known as, and we both started laughing hysterically.

Armed with this new knowledge I went to work today and recounted the events of yesterday's dinner to my workmate, Miss DB.

"... And so I said basa fillets but my sister thought I said bizaare phallus and then she told me that phallus means:...."

And I silently mouthed the word that phallus is otherwise known as.

Miss DB stared back- her eyes widened. She repeated "phallus" back to me and declared that she had never heard of such a word. I agreed and suggested that we google it. If this word meant what my sister told me it meant, that Google would obviously be the first to know.

So she googled "fallice".

Then: "fallus"

Then: "fallise"

Another work mate, Miss Tiny, chimed in and suggested some other permutations of how phallus could possibly be spelt based on our tenuous phonetic grasp of the word.

We hit a brick wall when Miss DB suggested:

"How about f-a-l-l-e....d. Oh wait, that's "falled".

As we fell about laughing I decided, enough fooling around- we needed to get the answer directly from the source.

A guy.

And so we pounced on Mr Funky Glasses and asked him whether he knew a word for that thing down there that starts with a "f" sound.

Without missing a beat, Mr Funky Glasses supplied: "phallic"

"As in "f"? I insisted.

"Nah, P-H" he explained, patiently.

The clouds had parted, we were ready to rock and roll.

Miss DB whizzed back around to her screen and googled "phallic" before being bombarded with all the variations of the word. One of which was "phallus".

Google kindly confirmed what my sister had alerted to me the night before and Miss Tiny, Miss DB and I retreated back to our desks, 5 minutes older, a little wiser and mildly mortified by what we had just discovered on a work computer that would most likely be screened by good old Big Brother up there.