Why do so many people pronounce lozenge with an -r at the end?

[F.U.Shakespeare]

On my undergrad engineering senior project, one of my partners was from Long Island. It took me a while to get straight his interchanged pronunciations of the thing that that tuned the frequency (the tuner) and the canned fish I that I ate a lot of at the time (tuna).

@CrazyCatLady

Out of curiosity, do these same people tack the r onto words that end in vowel sounds? (This is something that seems to be common in the Northeast–it used to drive me batshit to hear Rick Pitino talking about playing Georger and Alabamer.)

At any rate, it’s possible that the lozenge thing is just an extension of that. Lozenge ends in a “juh” sort of sound. Most people I know pronounce it so that the “uh” part is very faint, almost swallowed, but other people enunciate that part a bit more. It seems reasonable that someone who a)prounounces the 'uh" sound at the end of lozenge and b)tacks r’s onto the ends of words that end in vowel sounds would prounounce it lozenger.

[Johanna]

I made a mistake: it was Lauryn Hill I heard saying “lozenger”, not Faith Hill. (I knew it was one of those gals named Hill, but my brain wasn’t up to remembering these trivia details so early in the morning when I posted.) I looked up where Lauryn Hill comes from: South Orange, New Jersey.

I searched on Google for “lozenger” and found a site listing the funny ways people talk in Pittsburgh. “Lozenger” was one of the entries. My grandmother was born in Homestead right next to Pittsburgh, and my mom lived in Erie when she was a kid. It was my mom I first heard “lozenger” from, but when I asked she couldn’t explain why she said it that way.

Where the word actually comes from…

If you ever go into an Indian grocery, look if they sell freshly made Indian sweets. One type of Indian sweet is made from nuts (either almonds or cashews) ground with sugar into a paste, which is pressed into a flat rectangular pan where it sets. Then it’s cut into diamond-shaped pieces with a knife, by making a series of diagonal cuts across it, then another series of diagonal cuts at an angle that produces diamond-shaped pieces. This is why the diamond shape is called a “lozenge.”

This type of sweet originally came from Iran. The Arabic word for almond is lawz. In Persian it’s pronounced loz (sounds like the English word “lows” in the phrase “highs and lows”). The Persian suffix -inah after a suffix means ‘made from…’, so lawzinah means ‘made from almonds’. The final -j is a Persian diminutive suffix. So lawzinaj means literally ‘a small thing made from almonds’. The word lozenge was named for this type of candy called lawzinaj. That still doesn’t explain why anyone would stick a ghost -r on the end of it.

[Shade]

I was going to say I’ve never heard that here (UK) but it occurred to me: I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say “lozenge” any way ever…

[Mbossa]

@bordelond

As for the “lozenge/lozenger” quandary: I’d bet a dollar to a doughnut that it’s a back formation from the plural form “lozenges”. In some isolated pockets of English speakers – probably simultaneously in both the UK and USA – the logical singular form of “lozenges” came to be regarded as “lozenger”. Spelling be damned … this is a case where the ear called the tongue’s dance.

Yep. I am absolutely, positively, utterly, utterly certain that’s the origin. When I was a kid, I pronounced it ‘lozenger’, and I remember the reason. The first few times I ever heard the word, it was in its plural form. If I had a sore throat, Mum would buy me a pack of ‘lozenges’ (pronounced ‘lozengers’). The TV would advertise ‘throat lozenges’ (pronounced ‘throat lozengers’). Whenever I read the pack, it said ‘lozenges’, but it I never actually paid any attention to the exact spelling until I was much older (why would I? I recognised the word when I saw it, and I never needed to spell it myself). So the seemingly logical singular of a word pronounced ‘lozengers’ was ‘lozenger’.

[jastu]

@Spectre of Pithecanthropus

I’ve never heard “lozenger” either, but may I gripe here about “larnyx”? I’ve even heard people who have studied anatomy say that instead of “larynx”. People seem to have problems when those letters come together in a word.

A little confused here, what is the problem with larynx?

[Peanuthead]

@jastu

A little confused here, what is the problem with larynx?

They are pronouncing it LAR-NIX.

And as for lozengeR, they ought to take that damn R and put it back in the middle of FEB UARY where it belongs!

[xvxdarkknightxvx]

@Jomo Mojo

I made a mistake: it was Lauryn Hill I heard saying “lozenger”, not Faith Hill. (I knew it was one of those gals named Hill, but my brain wasn’t up to remembering these trivia details so early in the morning when I posted.) I looked up where Lauryn Hill comes from: South Orange, New Jersey.

Maybe she’s using up all the Rs so the evil white people don’t take them. :rolleyes:

I live in New Jersey, but I’ve never heard someone say lozenger. Also, I never heard someone say lozenge until I worked for a market research firm that held a study on them. I didn’t even know what one was. They had to explain it to me.

[Mathochist]

@Jomo Mojo

Lozenger. WTF? Even though it’s always written “lozenge,” it seems like half the people pronounce it “lozenger.” I’ve been hearing this for years. Just the other day I was listening to Faith Hill Unplugged, while introducing a song in concert she had a sore throat and said “I’m suckin’ on my lozenger.”

Why just this one word? There aren’t any other words that get a ghost -r added on the end. Are there?

It’s not a “ghost” r, it’s a variant on the word, like color and colour.

@OED

[f. LOZENGE + -ER.]

1. = LOZENGE n. 1. Obs.

1527 Test. Ebor. (Surtees) V. 244 Unum le diamond vocatum a losinger.
2. = LOZENGE n. 3. U.S. and north. dial.

1860 O. W. HOLMES Elsie V. (1887) 59 Boxes containing ‘lozengers’, as they were commonly called. 1887 T. E. BROWN Doctor 6 Somethin just to be haulin out For the kidsa lozenger or the lek.