I didn't take any Latin till I was about 40. My first word-oriented memory is of an episode in an English class in elementary school. We had been reading a story that had a kookaburra in it and the glossary at the end of the story defined it as "a laughing jackass" without pointing out that the phrase was just a sobriquet. No one in the class, including the teacher, except I had picked up on the fact that the kookaburra was a bird. There was a quiz that included asking what the kookaburra was. I got it wrong by virtue of giving a correct answer.

I do remember reading dictionaries when I was a youth.