[Radio Free Vestibule] I know it’s spelled K I L O M E T E R ,but it’s pronounced Thibodeaux [/RFV]
Welcome to the boards, Ricochet. The “zombie” jokes are because you posted to a very old thread, looks like from back in the heady days of 2001. Happens a lot, don’t worry. Me, I’m just surprised that after 15ish years the name “Ricochet” was still available.
I thought it was pronounced Throat-Warbler Mangrove.
This. I’d rather pronounce it “wrong” than sound like a smug autist by insisting on the “correct” pronunciation.
Come to think of it, I don’t remember groups of 1,000 ohms being called a “kilo ohm”. “Killa ohm”, yes. “Kay ohm”, quite often. but “Key Lo Ohm”? Hope.
“Key Lo Ohm”? Reminds me of some Vietnamese guy’s name.
I reserve the kill-o-meter pronunciation for my handy body-count tracking device for zombie hunting.
In Saskatchewan, it’s pronounced “k’lawmtre.”
It’s KILLometre on The Canadian Broadcorping Castration airwaves.
In David Bowie’s song “Always Crashing in the Same Car,” he puts the accent on the third syllable, making it sound like “killer meters.”
Very true.
I acknowledge that “-ometer” refers to a measuring device and “-metre” refers to a measurement, so it ought to be the latter, but I say both. What the hey, I’m only human.
We use miles, so it’s not an issue.
I was always outraged by the pronunciation sonta-meter. It wasn’t until years later, while reading linguistics texts, that I realized that the pronunciation was not an idiosyncratic stupidity, but, a linquistic marker. (For Medical Doctors in America in the 1940-50’s).
After four semesters of German, way back when, I can’t help but pronounce it ‘KILL-uh-mee-ter’ (or ‘KEEL-oh-may-ter’, if I’m not careful).
But we pronounce it “sent-i-meter” here in Canada, where we use centimetres.
‘Sonta-meter’ seems to be a Doctor Thing™.