The town of Beatrice in Nebraska is pronounced by the local yokels “Bee- AT- triss”.
When you cut prices to incentivize people to purchase, it is not a “sell”. It is a “sale”, and that rhymes with whale, and if you say different, you fail.
It is “impordunt” to get it right. :rolleyes:
A former co-worker always referred, in meetings no less, to the my-raid (myriad) of problems her department was facing. We all blushed silently.
My father used to pronounce drought as “drouth” because that’s the way it used to be pronounced n the 17th century or something. He thought it was cute.
Roddy
I don’t know, but chimbley is also fairly common.
My aunt had a boss who was a master of malapropism – the only example that’s coming to mind right now, though, is when he asked her to make him a hotel reservation at the “Romano”. She eventually figured out he meant Ramada. Oh, and he also "used “pacifically” instead of “specifically”, but that’s fairly common. The mispronunciation had an extra layer of humor, though, as the company involved was A&P – formally the Great Atlantic & **Pacific ** Tea Company!
Was that person from MA? My fil fom the Boston area called it a chimley.
After an earthquake in the Los Angeles area, my boss from headquarters out east asked: 'Where was the Epcot Center of that earthquake, anyway?"
Still used to this day by anyone who ever worked for him.
I just found The Riches on Netflix, fell in love with it, and then learned it got cancelled after two seasons. Boo, FX executives of 2008, boo!!!
I have a friend who really likes his “oskillating” fan. I wonder if he owns an oskilloscope.
Just remembered another one. I had a manager who pronounced ‘adage’, uh-DAZH. Like us Merkins say ‘garage’.
Roderick, I’ve heard ‘drouth’ also–usually said by the same people that say ‘heighth’.
nm
Hearing a newly elected municipal official repeatedly say DEB-riss during a public meeting about garbage collection contracts. It wasn’t 'til the way home in the car that I realized he meant di-BREE (spelled debris). He turned out to be a great public servant and he and I still laugh about his first encounter with the written version of that word.
A friend insists on pronouncing subsequent as sub-SEE-quent (s/b SUB-suh-quent), because the word sequence is pronounced SEE-quence.
I had a client recently tell me her daughter was “asphyxiated” on her iPhone. (She meant “fixated.”)
OMG, I can’t believe the king of all mispronounced words hasn’t been mentioned yet. It even has more than one regular variation of mispronunciation: supposedly. “Supposably” and “supposively”. Aaahhck! I seriously judge people who do this, I can’t help it, I’m a small man.
A college classmate of my sister’s asked in class, “But what about the libbiddy-doo?” [libido] There was a quiet pause while the class processed what he had said, then gales of laughter. Suffice it to say he never mispronounced that word again.
One of my college professors used to pronounce “specificity” as “spefisicity,” thus forever ruining my ability to say the word without pausing to think twice.
The wife, who does have excellent English, used to get tripped up on “nowadays,” saying “nowsaday” instead. It was cute, but she didn’t like that I thought it was cute and has since trained heself to say it properly. Pity, because it really was cute.
This reminds me of the Everybody Loves Raymond episode where it was brought up that he once came across the word ‘stomachache’ while reading. In trying to sound it out, he pronounced it sto-MA-cha-chi.
mmm
I was babysitting a friend’s young daughter one day and took her to visit another friend. It was a Saturday afternoon and a sudden snow squall appeared. My friend decided to use the event as a teaching moment. She took my friend’s daughter to the window, pointed to the sudden snowfall and said, very seriously, “This is called a snow squabble”. I nearly lost my mind.
I also routinely hear people say “real-a-tor” instead of realtor, which pretty much makes me crazy.
Around these parts many people pronounce ornery as on-ree.