Good thing I rarely have reason to read aloud, so they only get mispronounced in my head…
Maniacal = Mane-ee-ack-el
Indictment = In-dickt-ment
Cognac = Cog-nac
Persevere= Per-sev-er
infrared - I always see it first as the adjectival form of the nonexistent verb ‘infrare,’ and pronounce it that way before I correct myself.
arced just looks funny to me - I don’t pronounce it in my head, but it gives me pause - I don’t read it by word recognition, but have to rework through it each time.
misled
cowgirl: "Mize-eld? What the hell is Mize-eld supposed to mean ?
… oh."
I must be thinking of ‘tousled’ and ‘bristled’ and those kinds of words.
And I always, always, spell European as Eurpoean when I type it. I’ve had to Autocorrect it on my computer.
Deus Ex Machina. It’s always deuce in my mind.
I always mispronounce pedantic.
cowgirl, me too!!!
I actually said miz-uld to a class i was dictating to at 200 words a minute once. They all stopped and laughed at me. How embarrasskin!
What I think is funny about this is that somehow I had separated miz-uld and misled in my brain, like they were two different words.
I’ve got many others, due to my reading vocabulary. I am pretty much guaranteed to mispronounce an uncommon word, generally resulting in much hilarity from my fellows.
Too many to name.
See, I tend to see a lot more words in print than I ever hear in conversation. So, when I use one of these words for the first time, more often than not, I mispronounce it.
It’s really embarassing.
I just realized this week what the letters e-p-i-t-o-m-e represent in spoken form. I always read it with a long “o” and silent “e”. The sad part is that I use the word in spoken form all the time but never stopped to think how it is written.
Whenever I see the name Heath I always without fail initially interpret the word as “health.”
I also tend to think of the word “epitome” as being pronounced with long o and silent e.
Persevere always comes off as “preserve.”
I always thought “indict” was spelled “indight” until I finally saw the word in print.
I tend to drop the h in reading “threat” and it comes out “treat.”
“Improvise” sounds like “im-proo-vise” in my mind when I initially read it. I’m sure others I am not thinking of at the moment will appear in this thread.
Biopic, as in a movie about someone’s life. Always read it as bi-opic, or (I guess) something similar to myopic.
Also miniseries, which I pronounce (in my head) as the plural of “minisery.”
For some reason I have a hard time with awry. I always want to pronounce it as aw’-ree. Sheesh.
Add misled and infrared to my list.
When I read “beautiful” I say it “bee-ee-a-u-tiful” in my head.
I have always had a hard time spelling this word, and so I started pronouncing it that way in my head, and it has stuck!
Of course, that being said I’m not totally convinced that I didn’t just misspell it!
I always read gauge as gawj; ie., rhyming with lodge.
Epitome.
I always pronounced it Epi-Tome
I don’t do this too often, but I have a serious problem reading the name Penelope, and it carries over into speech. It’s Pen-lope, dang it.
I really can’t pronounce it. If I ever were to have a daughter, I cannot name her that.
I will admit to having read the word “go - ing” as “GOING”, rhyming with BOING, the noise Wiley Coyote’s face makes when hit with a shovel.
Also epitome, misled and umm… there’s another one, it gets me every time…darnit. I can’t think of it. OH! Draught. I know it’s pronounced “draft” but I always want to say “drouwt.”
That’s pronounced “draft”?? Ok, a new one for my list. I usually pronounce it “drouwt” or “drott.”
I just keep on, keeping on. Whose to know.
[sup]Ignorance is bliss.[/sup]
Ditto on infrared and epitome.