# Word errors you discovered embarrassingly late in life. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 23, 2009, 7:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-errors-you-discovered-embarrassingly-late-in-life/482604 "2009-01-23T07:01:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2009, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-errors-you-discovered-embarrassingly-late-in-life/482604/61 "2009-01-23T22:07:03Z")
It’s less a mistake than a preference, and IMHO it sounds icky so I notice it. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2009, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-errors-you-discovered-embarrassingly-late-in-life/482604/62 "2009-01-23T22:43:26Z")
> [@KnitWit](#): > > Her: Well, you should get a pacific area, then you’ll go work there. Pacifically. > > I thought she was going to send me to Seattle. Not an error, but I only learned a few years ago that pacific means something other than “warmer ocean on the opposite coast.” Maybe she just wanted you to mellow out 😃 **KneadToKnow** , a former coworker gave a couple of us his e-mail address [godownfighting@somerandomprovider.com](mailto:godownfighting@somerandomprovider.com), and a few days later someone asked me her: You got Tony’s e-mail address too, right? Do you know, is he, like, really religious or something? me: 😕 her: Well, it’s God Own Fighting, so that must mean something about God. Doesn’t it? me: Um… it’s Go Down Fighting. her: :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Euryphaessa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Euryphaessa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euryphaessa)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2009, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-errors-you-discovered-embarrassingly-late-in-life/482604/63 "2009-01-23T22:57:22Z")
I believe in-TEH-gral is something essential, while INT-e-gral was what you use in calculus. The pronunciation depends on how you’re using it. ---
**Author:** ![Pyper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Pyper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pyper)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2009, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-errors-you-discovered-embarrassingly-late-in-life/482604/64 "2009-01-23T23:00:27Z")
> [@JKilez](#): > > What exactly is the mistake? Webster’s has both ‘IN-teh-gral’ and ‘in-TEH-gral’ listed as valid, the former used primarily in the mathematics sense. I just checked the dictionary, and you’re right, both pronunciations are listed. So it’s my co-workers who should be embarrassed! I’m right! Bwa ha ha! ---
**Author:** ![scout1222](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/34f0e0/32.png) [@scout1222](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scout1222)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2009, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-errors-you-discovered-embarrassingly-late-in-life/482604/65 "2009-01-23T23:04:37Z")
I’m pretty sure I’ve never spoken the word GAOL, so I thank you folks for letting me know how to say it if it ever happens. ---
**Author:** ![TheBoltEater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/779978/32.png) [@TheBoltEater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheBoltEater)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2009, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-errors-you-discovered-embarrassingly-late-in-life/482604/66 "2009-01-23T23:23:36Z")
> [@Enfant Terrible](#): > > Put me in on desultory, too. > > For extra Dunce Cap points, I had to look up the meaning of the word–based on the prefix/root I would have thought the word meant ‘dismissive’. Yep, I was feeling pretty good about myself in this thread until “desultory” came up. Damn you desultory! ---
**Author:** ![Randy\_Seltzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ee7513/32.png) [@Randy\_Seltzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Randy_Seltzer)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-errors-you-discovered-embarrassingly-late-in-life/482604/67 "2009-01-24T00:19:37Z")
Indictment. I knew that someone could be “in-DITE-ed” near the start of criminal proceedings, and that it meant the guy was in big trouble. And I knew, from reading, that there was a similar concept “indicted” (pronounced “in-DICK-ted” in my head), which had a similar meaning. But I never connected the two. Thankfully, I figured this out some time before law school started. ---
**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-errors-you-discovered-embarrassingly-late-in-life/482604/68 "2009-01-24T00:37:01Z")
I thought wreak havoc was “RECK havoc” ---
**Author:** ![joyfool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/df788c/32.png) [@joyfool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joyfool)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-errors-you-discovered-embarrassingly-late-in-life/482604/69 "2009-01-24T00:55:36Z")
> [@JKilez](#): > > It was well into college before I connected the spoken and written forms of ‘epitome,’ ‘segue,’ and ‘paradigm’. I’m another one who thought segue was seg-ewe. My other words that I had problems with were decoupage (day-coup-ige) and minutiae (men-U-tay). Also something I undoubtedly got from my mother, The Mangler of Words, is not only how I thought asterisk was pronounced, but spelled; astrick. To this day I still feel like I’m falling-out-of-my-chair wrong when I say it the _correct_ way. And yes, all of this enlightenment came to me sometime after my mid twenties. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![lorene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/65b543/32.png) [@lorene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lorene)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-errors-you-discovered-embarrassingly-late-in-life/482604/70 "2009-01-24T01:13:14Z")
> [@faithfool](#): > > I’m another one who thought segue was seg-ewe. See, and I just thought it was “seg”. Hey, how do you all pronounce ornery? I say OR-ner-ee, but I have heard at least 2 people in recent years say. AWN-ree. What’s the deal? ---
**Author:** ![Wheeljack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/838e76/32.png) [@Wheeljack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wheeljack)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-errors-you-discovered-embarrassingly-late-in-life/482604/71 "2009-01-24T01:14:58Z")
> [@Petrobey\_Mavromihalis](#): > > The best place to discover that gaol is pronounced the same as jail is not whilst reading your essay on _The Ballad of Reading Gaol_ to an English professor at university. Ouch. I was 26 when I learned that you don’t make a conceited effort to do things. And don’t even get me started on hors d’œuvres. I must have seen that in print a thousand times before I realized what it was. ---
**Author:** ![GameHat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ed655f/32.png) [@GameHat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GameHat)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-errors-you-discovered-embarrassingly-late-in-life/482604/72 "2009-01-24T01:58:22Z")
I made it half-way through college knowing the pronounced “Seg-way” but being utterly baffled by the written “Segue” Doubly so because I’m a word nerd. Go ahead, ask what I got on the verbal SAT. I dare you. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![QuercusMax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/8baadc/32.png) [@QuercusMax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuercusMax)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-errors-you-discovered-embarrassingly-late-in-life/482604/73 "2009-01-24T02:13:23Z")
I definitely thought misled was mize-uld until some time in my teens. Same with aw-ry. ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-errors-you-discovered-embarrassingly-late-in-life/482604/74 "2009-01-24T02:22:30Z")
I was almost finished High School before learning that “twit” and “twat” were not supposed to be interchangeable in conversation. FWIW, my theory is that people who learned more by reading have a greater liklihood of mispronouncing words, and people who learned more by conversation have a greater liklihood of misspelling them. ---
**Author:** ![Drain\_Bead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e47774/32.png) [@Drain\_Bead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drain_Bead)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-errors-you-discovered-embarrassingly-late-in-life/482604/75 "2009-01-24T02:29:43Z")
> [@Pyper](#): > > My grandmother always told the story of the adults around her laughing their heads off when, as a young child, she announced that she hurt her arm and she was in “a-GOAN-ee.” Yeah, I got laughed at bigtime when I was about five and read out loud a sign that said “Grand Prix.” ---
**Author:** ![Eureka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/74df32/32.png) [@Eureka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eureka)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-errors-you-discovered-embarrassingly-late-in-life/482604/76 "2009-01-24T02:52:11Z")
In the laughed at for misprouncing something in front of an audience category, I present the Tarantula Hotel (it’s from “A Streetcar Named Desire” and I was in the eleventh grade). I was reading Blanche’s lines-- I assume-- and I read about the “Ta-ran-TU-la” Hotel. And the class laughed at me. This is embarassing partly because I got laughed at, and partly because I knew perfectly well that the word meaning (roughly) "big, hairy spider was spelled tarantula–I think it was the capital letter which threw me off. ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-errors-you-discovered-embarrassingly-late-in-life/482604/77 "2009-01-24T02:53:31Z")
I’m another one who will always read epitome as “ep-i-tome”. I’ve always pronounced it right… it just looks that way and reads that way in my head. Everything was always okay on that front until one day, after I had just read the word on the internet (probably here), then not long after, pronounced it wrong in a sentence when talking to my coworker. Oh, the scorn. The derisive laughter. How could I have convinced them I didn’t _really_ think it was pronounced that way all along? Now I just mutter to myself, constantly “epidomy, epidomy, epidomy…” ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-errors-you-discovered-embarrassingly-late-in-life/482604/78 "2009-01-24T03:09:36Z")
I long thought “recoup” was pronounced to rhyme with “coup”; i.e., with a silent \. But I was wrong… ---
**Author:** ![Geek\_Mecha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecae2f/32.png) [@Geek\_Mecha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Geek_Mecha)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-errors-you-discovered-embarrassingly-late-in-life/482604/79 "2009-01-24T03:39:12Z")
> [@lorene](#): > > Hey, how do you all pronounce ornery? I say OR-ner-ee, but I have heard at least 2 people in recent years say. AWN-ree. What’s the deal? It’s OR-ner-ree. Sounds like they’re confusing it with “ennui.” ---
**Author:** ![KnitWit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f0a364/32.png) [@KnitWit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KnitWit)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-errors-you-discovered-embarrassingly-late-in-life/482604/80 "2009-01-24T04:05:05Z")
> [@AudreyK](#): > > It’s OR-ner-ree. Sounds like they’re confusing it with “ennui.” Actually, my sister had a cat named Ornery and I could have sworn his name was Henri, pronounced the French way. Everyone said it “OHN-ry.” Weird. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-errors-you-discovered-embarrassingly-late-in-life/482604.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/word-errors-you-discovered-embarrassingly-late-in-life/482604.md?page=5)