This is weird. I’ve only ever heard it “Cavalry” as in “send in the cavalry.” I can’t remember anyone ever saying “calvary” and have actually heard the biblical Mt. Calvary mispronounced as Mt. Cavalry. So this is all odd to me.
West Coast data point checking in.
‘Cavalry’ is not a word that comes up in daily conversation; but when I hear it, it is nearly always pronounced correctly. The people who pronounce it ‘Calvary’ have, in my observation, been members of the lower-than-median economic group. I know a guy who has a BA from UCSD (he went there because it was a well-known ‘party school’) who pronounces ‘cavalry’ as ‘Calvary’. He also spells it incorrectly. But then, I suspect he has some measure of dyslexia and has trouble pronouncing some words; for example, when he was a roommate, ‘nemesis’ was pronounced ‘nemnis’.
Neither are words I see or hear often, so if I ever do have a reason to say them, it always gives me a second or two of pause to remember which is which.
I used to wonder, if Jesus was dragging the cross to Calvary to get crucified, why they didn’t rescue him. Weren’t they supposed to be famous for always coming to the rescue?
Of course, I was SIX at the time.
Seen on-line just earlier today:
11 words you’re probably mispronouncing in The Atlantic, apparently re-printed from Mental Floss.
I knew the correct pronunciation of eight of those, and use the correct pronunciation for seven of them. I pronounce the author’s name as ‘soos’, else others think I am a douche.
Not unless you’re referring to the “Calvaliers.”
I hadn’t even been aware of “calvary” until college, and it was a while longer before I learned that they were two different words. I suspect some people think it’s one word with two pronunciations.
Zombie thread but I was looking up the two words and this came up in the google search, so I decided to bump it.
Growing up non-religious, I had no idea they were two separate words until I was in my late thirties. I figured it was one of those words that had two very different meanings, like lead the noun and lead the verb. Or maybe there was something in the NT that made all these churches choose to name themselves after horse battalions, maybe a Roman cavalry unit had mass converted or something? Some weird Christian thing, whatever.
Also - I realized that I pronounce both words as “calvalry”. Does anyone else find themselves doing this? The second ‘L’ is almost silent, sort of a ghost of an L that joins on to the start of the r? I don’t know the linguistic term for it.
I only knew it as “calvary” when I was a kid, until I noticed it was spelled differently and looked it up. I’d say it’s most common in places that don’t emphasize “correct pronunciation.”
And, yes, I do to this day sometimes merge the two into calvalry if I’m not paying attention.
I’m sure I have heard “cavalry” mispronounced as “calvary” for most of my life, particularly when I lived in Oklahoma and Texas.
However, as a long time editor, I can assure you all that “cavalry” is misspelled “calvary” about 80% of the time when it crops up in something I’m editing. (Calvary never crops up in the stuff I’m editing so it isn’t misspelled the reverse way, but if I edited that kind of stuff, it probably would be misspelled too.)
I have heard that, people saying what sounds like ‘Calvary’ when they mean ‘cavalry’. I always assumed it was just like ‘nucular’ v. ‘nuclear’ (or Brett ‘Farv’ for that matter 
), mispronunciation with no real reason, but people learn it from one another.
I don’t know Protestantism much, but in Catholicism the place name Calvary is referred to only very occasionally. It’s hard to believe a person would have heard Calvary so much more often that cavalry would be a new word they consciously thought it was a homonym with Calvary.
In French ‘calvaire’ is sometimes used as a common noun for an ordeal. A book I’m reading now has it in the title, nothing to do with the place name. Different sound otherwise though from ‘cavalerie’.
or because certain letter/sound combinations, like “lr,” are uncommon and hard for some people to say?
I don’t know, is that one of those ‘the answer is obvious’ kind of ‘?s’ Do you have trouble saying nuclear correctly? Do you know other native English speakers who actually have physical difficulty saying it correctly? I always just figured no real particular reason. Maybe I’m wrong. Enlighten me more specifically please.
It was an “I’m speculating here–can anyone support or refute my suggestion?” kind of question mark.
You gotta be cavalier to be in the cavalry!
Also: it’s “et cetera,” not “ex cetera!”
It was in some very popular Hymns/Gospel music.
Either word is so rarely used here, I can’t think of a time that I’ve heard them used improperly.
One is pretty much a religious term, so schools wouldn’t dare mention it.
The other is a military term, generally used by generals and history teachers.
And, at least for me, it comes upat least every Easter, multiple times in song, and then also in the sermon.
I actually am surprised that it doesn’t come up more in Catholicism. It’s commonly used as a less intense way to refer to the crucifixion. “But on a hill called Calvary, my sins were washed away.”
I also think Calvary is easier to say than cavalry. Having the L followed by a V is easy. Having it followed by an R is an uncommon tongue movement for me. Words like that often get transposed sounds.
I think it’s more commonly heard in protestant denominations, because growing up Catholic, I really can’t recall hearing it much at all.
I’m thinking, though, that BigT’s point is … almost why it’s not used as much in Catholicism. Speaking generally, there seems to be much more focus on the suffering of Jesus, the sacrifice he made – like how Catholics generally use the crucifix with Jesus on it, not just the cross itself. Post-Vatican II, this has toned down a lot, but some old-school crucifixes can be pretty damn gory:
The intensity of the crucifixion is very much a feature, not a bug.
Cavalry = guys on horses
Calvary = Golgotha