I first came across the word ‘piety’ while playing civilization 5, and then ‘filial piety’ when I googled piety.
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Before WK I’d always thought pronunciation was called “pronOunciation”, since it’s called “to pronounce”. And for some reason I thought vicinity was called “viNcinity” 
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-mediterrenean (mediterranean?) no idea how to spell that. Get it wrong every time.
-learned how to spell acquaintance
-cleat? What is that?
-The Heck??
-Triceratops. Just why?
-same for pron(o)unciation… After all, it’s pronoun…
There were a few other things, I’ll post them when I remember…
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A cleat is a specialized type of shoe (attachment) that helps with traction on different surfaces. The most common are ice cleats/snow chains and soccer (aka football) cleats for running on grass.
“the heck” is probably short for “what the heck!?”, a family friendly replacement for “what the hell?”. All of these are used to express surprise or confusion with an unexpected situation. By itself “heck” is sometimes also used to refer to “hell” as in religious purgatory among more conservative people, but that’s tied more to local culture, children, and religion and isn’t typically doesn’t use the article before it.
An athlete trips in the middle of a game
Spectator A: “The heck was that!?”
Spectator B: “It looks like that idiot went on the pitch without cleats again.”
Spectator A: “How the hell are they winning then!?”
Spectator B: “Watch your language, this is a youth league!”
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I’m English… and had no idea what a cleat was till I came across it in Wanikani. More horrifyingly, I graduated from university seven years ago and I studied language…
Sheesh, I feel you man. I screwed that spelling up so many times that I just added “byråkrat” (the Swedish word) as a synonym to save my sanity…
Also, unlike in the mnemonic, a splinter is a small, sharp piece of wood, usually hard to see with the naked eye, that has broken off from a larger piece, that (sometimes/often) pierces the skin and causes discomfort to extreme pain depending on the size and location. So small, you have to scrape it out with a credit card, or use tweezers. Cheap chopsticks can splinter. You can get them from playing on wooden schoolyard equipment (back when they were still made from wood), etc.
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The shoes you wear for (non-US) football, with the spikes for catching the grass. Those are cleats.
As a native speaker born in Canada, WaniKani was the first I’d ever seen those two words together, or Filial at all. Totally had no F-ing clue on that one. Piety I’d only ever seen in relation to religious stuff… “That Pharisee thought he was really pious”… etc. I had to look that up. I read a whole ton, and I’d still never come across it before!
EDIT: Actually, seeing more of you talk about it… I realize that while I probably burned the kanji/vocab already… I do not remember what that actually means. I need another English synonym… like “chastity” (I know it’s not that) or “fidelity” (maybe it was that?) or something. Or was it like family loyalty??? *shrugs*
While I’ve known that since at least highschool (so um… 15-18 years ago), I still misspell that all the time, and have to go and change it whenever the red squiggly line appears… it’s always an “oh, right, it’s not that” kind of moment for me. @_@ Nearly every single time.
EDIT 2: Don’t worry, I looked up Filial Piety again just now, and then Filial again on it’s own, because all the definitions only mention Confucianism… and now having done that, it makes a lot more sense to me. Hopefully, I’ll remember it this time… But I probably won’t. XD Even though I think it’s an important value to have.
Of course… that’s a loan word so…
Two more English words of the day:
- Hegemony
- Pouching
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I still have no idea what hollyhock, chrysanthemum, or sedge look like… i do know what wisteria looks like, but only because I googled it.
Chrysanthemum is even the same word in Swedish, and I still have no idea what it looks like! 
I botanist I am not.
What I also am not is a baseball enthusiast or lawyer… suspension of indictment? No idea, but I know to answer it when the appropriate WK word pops up.
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Talking of extra long typing… I am not sure if I can remember it for 4 months…
Articles of incorporation.
There must be a lot more.
I know what chrysanthemum is, though.
It’s hard to argue that sakura isn’t the #1 flower in Japanese culture, but chrysanthemum would give it a run for its money, being the symbol of the emperor and all.
Native English speaker here. Don’t know that WaniKani has taught me any new English words, but a realization or two, such as that Mediterranean means “middle Earth” in whatever language it originated in (looks like Greek origin to me). Also, after thinking about 中国 for a while, I expected something related for India but was disappointed. Then I discovered that the same kanji are used in China for “China” so the Japanese probably got it there, huh?
Insert angry rant about ethnocentrism here.
Lol, jk. USA! USA! USA!
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Mediterranean has a latin origin, and it’s meant to be interpreted more as “between the lands” (for obvious geographical reasons).
The japanese term for it is most probably a calque.
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I didn’t no what “Municipal” meant. I was really was missing out. It’s almost a everyday word.
I did the same with Byrå, lol! Even with the leeway they give us I couldn’t get close enough =P
I’ll have to do it again when I reach it again (reset from 19)
There have been several words I slightly knew and now know better, like hull. Never really needed to know what the body of a boat is called, now I know it anyway =P
I had to google mullet, though it was what I thought it was, but now I know it better =P
There where words I gave up and renamed. Like cleat, I went for shoe, even though it was the spikes, close enough and still worked in the stories. It was just too close to clit, as in clitoris, lol! I did remember the word cleat while typing shoe though.
The one I couldn’t find googling was The Hick. The who now? It seemed to refer to a person… It was so odd I managed to remember it, but who, what? It was a radical.
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I added blåregn (lit: blue rain) as a synonym for wisteria, since it at least makes sense in describing the flower.
…then I ended up remembering that it’s called wisteria in english anyway, so I never used it 
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