How do you pronounce "distributed"?

In My Humble Opinion
1

As one might gather from my username, this is a word that I have a special relationship with. I grew up in a “dis-TRIB-yu-ted” household, and went along naively assuming that this was how the word was pronounced. Then I came to my present location of West Texas, where students heavily favor “DIST-rib-yu-ted.” I can sort of see why: I do say “dis-trib-YU-shun,” which has a different syllable accent pattern than “distributed” for me. But “DIS-trib-yu-ted” just sounds so…awkward to me.

Is this a regional thing?

2

Must be a weird regional thing.

One of the computing environments my department supports is known as “Distributed” so I hear the word a lot, and I’ve never heard anyone accenting the first syllable.

3

Do they also say DIS-tri-bute instead of dis-STRIB-ute?

4

Weird. I say DIS-tri-bute but dis-TRIB-uted.

Apparently, I am a freak.

5

IIRC, Brits accent the first syllable.

6

Seems your poll results are pretty conclusive.

7

I put the accent on the second syllable, but neither form sounds weird to me.

8

Oddly, those who accent the first syllable use the latter pronunciation. But they will also say things like:

“From our factory, our finished goods will go to our DIS-trib-yu-ters”

(I teach an intro to operations management class that requires an oral presentation of a project, so I hear sentences like the one above a lot).

9

Do you have any linguistic connection to eastern New Mexico or Weest Texas? That’s where I hear it a lot.

10

I voted for the first option, but thinking about it I think I might say it the other way occasionally. I did grow up in West Texas.

11

Mostly the former, occasionally the latter.

12

Nope, I’m from outside Chicago. I’ve spent a fair amount of time living overseas but I don’t know if that had any impact or not.

13

dis-tri-BYU-ted

14

Di-strib-yu-ted

Let me check that…
Yep, that’s it.