I have heard many obstetrical nurses say “centimeter”, and they all pronounce it “sahntimeter”, as if they are trying to mimic the French pronunciation or something. I haven’t heard other nurses use the word, but I imagine they all pronounce it the same way. They probably are taught that pronunciation in nursing school. I have never heard any scientists who use the term pronounce it that way. I don’t recall hearing any doctors pronounce it, but if I did, they pronounced it in the normal way. (That is, I think I would have remembered it if they said “sahntimeter”.)
This is in the US, where unfortunately the metric system is not yet in common use.
My question is why do nurses pronounce it that way, and how do they (nurses) pronounce it in other English-speaking countries?
I think they’re invoking Saint Emetre which would mean your life expectancy is measured in hours. Why would they be using centimetres, anyway? Or did they measure your penis and found inches were too large to use as a unit of measurement? What units do they use for vaginas? Fathoms? what’s an obsteatrical nurse, anyway?
Are all your nurses hispanic? 'Cause when I say that word based on how you wrote it, that’s how it sounds to me - someone with a thick Spanish accent saying the word.
Because that’s the way they’ve always pronounced it. Institutions and groups often have these sort of hangover traditions that make no sense.
I suspect someone was originally giving it a French pronunciation. And that prounciation was handed down in nursing school for years. It’s like the story of the Christmas ham (“Mom, why did you always cut off the ends?” “The fit in the pan.”).
I know a similar example from a local community college. The teachers there would pronounce the publisher Houghton Mifflin as “Who Mifflin.” When challenged, they would tell you that they were using the correct pronuciation.
I asked someone who worked at Houghton Mifflin about it. They had never heard the pronunciation. I suspect that someone was trying to indicate the “Hough” was pronounced “who” and assumed the listener would understand the “ton” was also pronounced.
Some doctors say “sahntimeter” too. I think it goes back to the fact that SI units were originally developed in France. It appeals to the same sort of person who insists on pronouncing literature “littrachaw” because the British say it that way.
My wife (a nurse) also pronounces centimeter as “sahntimeter.” When I asked her why she pronounced it that way, she told me that’s how she was taught in nursing school. She then added that it was originally a French word, and that is the correct pronunciation. I replied that the word may have originated in French, but was now an ordinary English word, with an ordinary English pronunciation. After all, (I said), how do you pronounce restaurant? Then she got mad at me.
Unless they also pronounced the last syllable as /tr/ (sort of like “truh”, but with the vowel sound almost gone), they aren’t getting very close to the French pronunciation.
Why the effort to pronounce it (supposedly) correctly when no effort is made to spell it correctly centimetre, surely if the US spelling is ok then the english pronunciation is too.
My labor nurse pronounced it that way when I was having my first baby. She’d stick her hand inside every so often and say you’re 3 sahntimeters or 5 sahntimeters. By the time I finally hit ten SAHNtimeters, I was ready to slap her.
We used to make fun of this barbarism. In fact, many surgeons say 'sahn’timeter and obstetricians consider themselves surgeons. Nurses have naturally picked up many of the traditions of thoe they work with. From my experience, many surgeons are also pseudointellectuals. Many people who enter medicine have very little understanding of art, history and literature (with many who have a profound understanding of these things). Success in surgery often involves concentrating ones intellect in a very narrow area, but that does not stop them from wanting to be percived as broad intellectuals. For this reason, surgeons are fond of saying things like “of course the term is derived from the Systeme Internationale” or debating whether how many snakes should be in the cadeuceus (that snake around staff thingy often symbolizing “medicine”).
Hey, a question on territory I’m really familiar with
I should mention however Richard, that I’m a midwife, not an obstetrical nurse gag, but that’s a whole other thread.
I’m an Australian who trained as a midwife in Scotland, and I can tell you that I have never heard a European or Australian midwife say sahntimetre. In fact, in Scotland centimetre was pronounced “whisky and a pint of heavy” laughs
Must be an american thing, after all, look at the way you pronounce aluminium
Russell-
I suspect that you have heard a British pronunciation similar to what was written. I’ve spent the last three years surrounded by Brits from Cambridge, London, the Isle of Wight and other locales and the way I hear them pronounce this word is:
“LIT-ruh-cheu” or “LIT-ruh-cheur”
Americans tend to pronounce each syllable as in:
“LIT-er-uh-chure”
OR words that end in “-ary” or “-ery.” Most English dialects I’ve heard glide over the vowel sound. As in “necessary” become “necess’ry.” Sometimes there is a hint of an “a” there, but it’s almost swallowed schwa, whereas in American English it’s hard and pronounced, like the “a” in apple.
FWIW, I have never heard this at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, MD, nor at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. …Or at any of their numerous branch medical clinics.
I work in a hospital, and I hear it all the time. I have two theories: either (1) the French (or Canadians) started measuring in centimeters when we were still using inches, and we stole the pronunciation along with the idea, and it just stuck in medicine but not in any other field; or
(2) The staff are being unbearably pretentious.
…I have heard “sahn-ti-meters” from medical students, so they are certainly learning it in school. I have a special respect for those who can speak their own native tongue and say “She’s seven centimeters dilated” like a normal person.
Slightly off-topic-- P.J. O’Rourke sez: “You may disapprove of illegal drugs, but they taught an entire generation of kids the metric system.” tee hee.
At my medical school (eastern US), most of the professors tended to pronounce it as “sahn-timeter”- I, for one, had never heard it pronounced that way in college (mid-west) or
earlier (west coast)- and judging by the looks on my fellow students faces, others hadn’t either. As you might expect, some students started to pronounce it “sahn timeter” too… I have heard it both ways in the hospitals I have worked at since.
I haven’t noticed any predeliction on the part of OB nurses, surgeons or any other group to pronounce it that way.
