First off, I have always lived in the Western US, so perhaps this is a regional thing, but I keep running across people who think there is a ‘t’ at the end of the word across.
For example they might say ‘I just came acrosst this article’. They don’t add a ‘t’ when they write the word out, so it’s not like they don’t know how the word is spelled.
I don’t correct them, it’s not worth having an argument about, but where did this pronunciation come from? Anybody know?
I live just south of the city of Chicago, and it is common to hear it from the farm boys a bit souther from me. Accrost.
I heard it all the time in Indiana and southern Illinois, and I don’t think the people saying it realize they’re putting a t at the end of the word. If I said something, I think it would amaze them. They think they are pronouncing it as it is spelled.
It’s just a dialectical pronounciation.
Tell people the right way, they’ll say it wrong anyways.
Okay, so which dialect is it? It’s not like everyone in a particular country or even geographical area mispronounces it in the same way. It’s apparently a common mispronunciation across a very wide area.
There a good discussion here. The acrost pronunciation is cited by the O.E.D. from 1759 as U.S. dialect. There are also some nice quotes of usage by Kipling and Ring Lardner, so it appears to be widespread and well known, if substandard.
Isn’t acrossed the past participle of across?