Recently, while listening to NPR on my daily commute, I’ve heard people refer to things that are really really big as “bohemoths” – pronounced “bo-HEE-muth”. Long “O”. Today was probably the third time in as many weeks that I’ve heard the pronunciation.
I’d always thought the word was “behemoth” – pronounced “BE-a-muth” or “buh-HEE-muth”.
Am I missing something? Is there such a word as “bohemoth”? (My dictionary is packed away at for the time being.) Or is this a widespread mispronunciation like “nuke-yoo-lur”? (Which, BTW, I find harder to say incorrectly than correctly.)
Steven Wright’s radio voiceover in “Reservoir Dogs” made reference to a “bo-he-meth monster truck rally” or the like. I’d suspect for at least some people this mispronunciation is the only pronunciation they’ve heard.
There’s nothing wrong with the “Febuary” pronunciation. From dictionary.com: Although the variant pronunciation (fby-r) is often censured because it doesn’t reflect the spelling of the word, it is quite common in educated speech and is generally considered acceptable . . .
I’ve seen “bohemoth” written on this board by people so well educated that I’d be inclined to take their word over the dictionary’s. However, if it’s a variant, it’s not in any dictionary I’ve seen yet.
“in lament terms”/“in laments terms”/“in lament’s terms”: 38, 63, and 12 hits respectively. (I came across “in lament terms” just the other day and thought, “Surely nobody else is that dumb” - but of course they are…)
and the old favourite: “for/to all intensive purposes”: 4,130 hits for “for”, 120 for “to”.
I’ve heard some people say “ortopsy” (instead of “autopsy”). Google returned eight pages, two of which are foreign, one which points out that “ortopsy” is not a word, and one that meant to say “or Topsy”.
