I’m sympathetic to people who mess up words like this, where
the subject matter of the conversation is unpleasant
it’s an uncommonly used word in speech
it’s long
it’s phonetically clumsy (soup-REM-ass-IST – too many sibilant sounds).
As an analogy, I am not 100% sure how to pronounce “miscegenation” – I’ve heard others say it maybe 20 times in my life, and maybe said it myself once or twice, but I’ve got a bit of a memory fort built around the word because it’s so vile, and I’ve seen it in writing so many more times than I’ve heard it. (I’m guessing it’s miss-EDGE-in-AY-shun?)
There is nothing wrong, in English, with coining a term using standardized forms. Supremist can be a word, just as abortionist or Cubanist or Dadaist. Just add -ist to a concept to describe one as a follower of advocate of that particular -ism.
So, by back formation, considering supremist and supremacist, we find that “supreme” and “supremacy” are two different concepts, different meanings. If you are an advocate of supremacy as a concept. you are a supremacist. If you like Diana Ross, you may be a supremist, but I can’t think of any other way the idea of of supremism would convey much. What does it mean to advocate or foster the idea of “supreme”?
English is not a language that is friendly to a die-hard anything. If you are writing for a prescriptive reader, follow prescriptive methodology. If you are writing for descriptivist reader, follow descriptivism. Write for comprehension, but make sure you know what you are talking about. Just parroting someone else’s words (like ‘supremist’) can lead you down some unhappy trails of misunderstanding.
For those who say “supremist” (shudder), do you pronounce the “PREM” to rhyme with “dream” (as in “All I Have to Do is Dream”) or with “them” (as in “Them There Eyes”)?
In language in general, and especially American English, if enough people say something intended to express a certain meaning and enough others understand it as conveying that meaning, then you’ve got yourself a new word. It never matters how vehemently those who don’t like it refuse to accept it.
Supremist is included in many dictionaries since it’s so widely used and understood to mean supremacist. This isn’t a recent thing. It has been shortened or mispronounced as supremist for a pretty long time.
According to the ngram viewer, current usage of ‘supremacist’ surpasses ‘supremist’ by a factor of about 1,000:1. I would have to have pretty strong reasons to want to stick to being in a one-in-a-thousand minority.
For the record, I’m not going to say “noo-kyu-lar”, either.
I can understand using “supremist” just fine. It’s someone who thinks whites are supreme, so call them a white- supreme-ist. But I would not expect the word to be pronounced with the same e vowel in supremacist.
I also understand elision. Those two /s/ sounds so close together can be harder to say. I would expect it to be elided at least some of the time in faster speech.
Combine those two, and I could see a new word being coined.
That said, I stick with “supremacist,” although it may wind up shortened to ss-preh-m’-siss, with a sharp s at the end instead of [st].
That’s [sːˈpɹɛmːˌsis͈] for those who need the IPA.
Apologies for the delay, but indicating the “sharp s” I indicated took a bit of looking into. Best I could do was a strong articulation mark below the [s].
