I always heard it as rigmarole. I only heard rigamarole for the first time in an episode of Rick & Morty.
I should have probably clarified that it’s only ‘cumbersome and unnatural’ to try and say rig-marole when you’ve only ever heard it pronounced rig-a-marole. It’s sort of like a mild tongue-twister, my brain simply insists on inserting that ‘a’ sound every time. Even when I concentrate and do say ‘rig-marole’ I’m still hearing the middle ‘a’ in my head when I do*!*
My guess is that the /g/ sound is just harder, and thus the release started sounding a bit like a schwa, and that this was gradually exaggerated. Though I also wouldn’t be surprised if it had to do with immigrants with languages that don’t allow such a combination. An obvious example would be Italians, for whom even “big man” which I mentioned earlier would have come out “big-a-man.”
There is nothing cumbersome at all about the as-spelled pronunciation of “rigmarole;” any more than there is with “nuclear,” or “comfortable.”
I can’t help but bring this thread back to life… my spell-checker didn’t like “rigamarole”, so I had to find out what I was doing wrong. Like many others here, I have only heard “rigamarole” and not once have I heard the word “rigmarole”. I was raised in Ohio. I’ve been in California for a long time and had a co-worker that often said “rigamarole”; however, he was from Chicago. So… there you have it. Seems to be a regional thing.
Anyways, I can’t help but notice that kaylasdad99’s argument for “rigmarole” seems to be a better argument for “rigamarole”. It seems to me that “comfortable” is closer to “rigamarole” than it is to “rigmarole”; and, with that in mind, leaving the ‘A’ out of “comfortable” (comfort-ble) is how awkward and cumbersome it is for us rigamarolers to leave the ‘A’ out of “rigamarole” (rig-marole). Interesting and entertaining for sure.
Thanks,
~Eric
So do you also say “stig-a-ma” and “mag-a-ma”?
And while we’re at it… it’s “anyway”.
Or “palaver”. Or “faff”, “fantigue”, “grand opera”, "going round the houses, “making a production” or many another…
The difference is the “r” that follows in “rigmarole.” To go right from a “g” sound to an “m” sound, the mouth (tongue and lips) has to make a mildly difficult movement. “R” in most varieties from of English is often pronounced not as a separate letter, but rather starts out as part of the preceding sound. That is, the mouth is already positioned for the “r” – back of the tongue pressed against the sides of the lower molars – while the previous sound is being pronounced (in this case, the “m”).
That’s what makes “rigmarole” slightly more prone to epithensis than, say, “stigma.”
Also, this might explain why (some) Americans insert the extra “a” more often than (some) non-Americans. I believe that many non-Americans more fully pronounce the “a” in, say, “-marole.” That is, they don’t start to form the “r” as early as Americans do. So, the “r” mouth position doesn’t interfere with the previous “-gm-” sequence as much as it does for many Americans.
In other words, there needs to be a vowel SOMEWHERE in the -gmr- sequence – it’s just a question of where to put it.
The polloi will always defeat the pedants over the long run when standard usage is in transition.
Rigamarole will win this one, and eventually the standard-bearers will have to cave. :mad:
It’s easier to give the word a little oomph with “rigamarole” and that oomph fits with the thrust of what you are trying to convey.
“Stigma” is safe (although “stigmata” is probably a lost cause 
).
It’s a teeny word that likes to be tightly pronounced to help convey it…
I’m sorry, but you’ve totally misunderstood why “comfortable” was included as an example. No one leaves the a out of comfortable, or even thinks about it. It’s the or that gets left out, making it the three syllable word “comftable.” Often the “r” sound is incorporated into the second syllable, making the pronunciation “comfterble.”
The point is that it’s human nature to drop a syllable to shorten pronunciation in many cases, but also to insert a syllable to enhance the “roll off the tongue” effect in other cases (see post #9).
Since the second vowel is a schwa, it’s not clear which phonemes are being removed in the “comftable” pronunciation. But I frequently hear “or” in the shorter pronunciation: “comftorble”, indicating to me that the “a” is being elided. If yours is a non-rhotic dialect, that may account for the difference in your experience. “comftable” sounds somewhat strange to me.
Grew up in the Pacific Northwest. Never seen or heard “rigmarole” in my whole life, as a fairly well-read man hitting 40. I think “rigamarole” is the standard American usage of this word. Like “aluminum” versus “aluminium”.
“Rigamarole” does seem to be mainly a US usage. In the Global Corpus of Online English, “rigmarole” is seen 43 times in the US and 111 times in Great Britain, while “rigamarole” is seen 28 times in the US and 6 times in Great Britain. Nevertheless, “rigmarole” is more common than “rigamarole” in both countries (by 1.5x in the US and 18x in GB). The word in either form seems to be much more common in GB than the US.
Flyover country reporting in, and it is rig-a-marole here as well.
I just avoid confusion and use “clusterfuck”.
There already is one… between the m and r.
Midwesterner here, never once in my life have I heard or read “rig-marole”. It’s always been “rigamarole” and Firefox even tells me I spelled it right, so there.
Western Pennsylvania here. Just surveyed five people here and they all say rig-a-ma-role, spell the word rigamarole, and believe “rigmarole” is misspelled.
Upstate New Yorker. Never heard any usage other than rigamarole. Didn’t even know there was an alternative or a controversy.
Merriam-Webster says: