If you’ve ever wondered how academics pass the time during the long summer break the Times Higher Education Supplement has supplied the answer: they get together and ridicule their students hilarious attempts at exam answers.

Most are simply spelling errors resulting from either idiocy or a lack of proof reading. These include situations requiring “unpresidented” responses, “deftifying” leaps and “flirtation” making water safe to drink.

Others, however, warp reality and change the meaning of answers in some quite fantastic ways. There are dozens of these listed in the comment sections of the THES website, but they’re hidden amongst the many hundreds of comments from angry academics attacking the decline in academic standards and spelling abilities. To save you from being potentially exposed to the comments of these nasty academics, I’ve picked out the top-10 exam gaffes so you don’t have to:

1. Commenting on the rise of anti-Jewish sentiments in 20th century Germany one student wrote: “Antisemitism in Nazi Germany was difficult, especially for the Jews”.
2. Discussing Magaret Atwood’s novel another stated: “The Handmaid’s Tale shows how patriarchy treats women as escape goats”.
3. Still on literature a student confidently declares: “Beowulf is an anonymous medieval poem written in the 18th century by Robert Cotton”.
4. From the ever-exciting world of soil ecology: “Symbiosis may be defined as ‘living together’ in Greece.”
5. Staying with ecology: “Wood is difficult to decompose, because it is highly dignified”.
6. Moving swiftly on, in economics a student spends an entire essay referring to the “Keynesian theory of full unemployment”.
7. A budding sociologist on the causes and effects of the poverty cycle states: “The most influential aspect of poverty is the absence of marriage between parents, particularly mothers.”
8. A student attempts the most horrifically wrong sentence of all time by remarking: “The Egyptians built the Pyrenees, which were triangular shaped cubes.”
9. A tourism student confidently discusses the role of in flight staff: “Air stewardesses step into the role of portraying their front region, as the job requires them to.”
10. Last, but not least, yet another ecology blooper, Red deer, we learn “are native to Scotland and have long been cohabiting with man”.