I seriously doubt this, since (to the best of my knowledge) the # wasn’t used in the phone business until the 1960’s, when touch-tone phones were introduced. I’m fairly certain that it was used as an abbreviation for “pound” long before that.
Your link confirms that PRIM-mer is the primary pronunciation, and PRY-mer as a “chiefly British” alternative. And, as I mentioned in an earlier post, the latest American Heritage dictionary shows only PRIM-mer. The “chiefly British” alternative of PRY-mer doesn’t even show up as an acceptable alternative.
Again, fetus has it backward. “Primmer” is the American pronunciation. “Prymer” is British.
My high school world history teacher once handed out copies of a map of the Caspian Sea, which she said was Great Britain. (She was confusing the water and the land.) My fellow students and I spent the rest of the class period trying to convince her, seemingly without success. But the next day she handed out a new map, saying something like "Since you all had such a problem with the last one . . . "
One common mistake that drives me nuts is when people think the correct expression is “You’ve got another thing coming.” It’s “another think coming”, as in “If that’s what you think, you’ve got another think coming” (deliberate bad grammar for the sake of humor), at least if you believe the Oxford English Dictionary and not the band Judas Priest.
Just how many times DO people here have people say “primer” to them anyway, correct OR incorrect pronunciation? I can’t say I remember it ever having come up in conversation myself.
The normal Canadian name for # is ‘number sign’. We do have the ‘pound sign’ usage, but only in the context of telephone keypads.
My own belief is that this usage arrived with automated phone response systems, many of which were made in the States. These incorporated the US usage of ‘pound’ for #, because it was a convenient one-syllable counterpart to ‘star’ for *.
We’ve done that on the board before. I’m still going with “thing.” Many people asked what the other “thing” could possibly be. The answer, I think, is obvious.
If you think you’re getting ice cream for dinner, you’ve got another thing coming.
Thing the first: Ice cream
The other thing: Brussells sprouts
I can tell you from experience that parts of the world still call it that. Last time I was in Europe the instructions said please enter your passcode followed by hash. In fact, I can still hear the voice of the lady in my head (ha ha). She has a most fantastic British accent when you choose to listen in English.
Any American with a sense of irony would enter their passcode and then try to shove some cannibis in there.
ETA: I didn’t add this to be a jerk as I think it might seem but only because WF Tomba said he couldn’t find his cite for this info.
I thought that one too. I think I was 11 before it clicked.
And as for the Primm-er/Pry-mer debate, I was always under the impression that primm-er was a British thing and Pry-mer was the American pronounciation and I’ve always lived in the good 'ol US of A.
I always thought it said “elb” and was at a loss to connect it to the Expos or baseball or anything (“Expo League Baseball”?). I never saw the stylised M until reading these posts.
I’m probably not the best representative here because (a) I used to write primers, and (b) I own a bookstore, so I hear people saying things like “do you have a good gardening primer?” on a regular basis.
I find this whole discussion fascinating. It seems that almost everybody who has heard both pronunciations figures that one is American and one is British, and most of them have it backwards. I first pronounced it as “pry-mer” because I had your typical teenage boy’s fascination with explosives and guns, so I knew the other “primer” word. I later found out that the correct pronunciation was “prim-mer.” It was several years after that when I discovered that the Brits do, indeed, pronounce it “pry-mer.”
