# Words you enjoy mispronouncing
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-enjoy-mispronouncing/317800
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [August 19, 2005, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-enjoy-mispronouncing/317800 "2005-08-19T20:45:32Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2005, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-enjoy-mispronouncing/317800/1 "2005-08-19T20:45:32Z")
Do you deliberately mispronounce certain words because they’re funnier that way? Do you do it just to bug someone else?
I like to say “bohemoth” instead of “behemoth.” I don’t know why, but the former just sounds more amusing to me than the latter.
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### Author:  [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2005, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-enjoy-mispronouncing/317800/2 "2005-08-19T20:48:00Z")
“Pugnant,” for “pungent.”
My college bf said this once – 30 years later, I’m still not sure if he was whooshing me or not, but the pronunciation has stuck.
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### Author:  [@The\_King\_of\_Soup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_King_of_Soup)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2005, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-enjoy-mispronouncing/317800/3 "2005-08-19T20:48:38Z")
I had a professor once who liked to say “vi-ola” instead of “voila.” When and why he installed “voila” in his lexicon in the first place I can’t say.
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### Author:  [@Amaranta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amaranta)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2005, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-enjoy-mispronouncing/317800/4 "2005-08-19T20:52:26Z")
A friend of mine says “long-er-eh” or “ling-er-eh” (both with a hard “g”) for lingerie. It used to bother me so much, but I find myself doing it all the time.
I always throw out “Hey-zus” for Jesus, and “Hor-hey” for George. No good reason.
Also, “ski-ssors” for scissors.
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### Author:  [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2005, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-enjoy-mispronouncing/317800/5 "2005-08-19T20:52:45Z")
Cow-orker instead of co-worker. I just think it’s funny to say out loud. Cow-Orker. 😃 Seems obscene yet not identifiably so.
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### Author:  [@Amaranta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amaranta)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2005, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-enjoy-mispronouncing/317800/6 "2005-08-19T21:02:45Z")
We also call my friend Siobhan (pronounced “Sha-vann”) Si-o-ba-hane, or Si-ob, or just Si. But only because she doesn’t mind. 😉
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### Author:  [@Feydeau](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Feydeau)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2005, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-enjoy-mispronouncing/317800/7 "2005-08-19T21:02:51Z")
Shizzors (for scissors, if it wasn’t obvious).
Aluminium (I’m a closet Brit, I guess). [And that’s _al-yoo-min-ee-um_]
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### Author:  [@Daithi\_Lacha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daithi_Lacha)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2005, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-enjoy-mispronouncing/317800/8 "2005-08-19T21:07:56Z")
Ansyways and Anyhoo.
This put me in mind of Stephen Fry’s gag:
“He walked with a pronounced limp: L-I-M-P, pronounced, _limp_.”
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### Author:  [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2005, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-enjoy-mispronouncing/317800/9 "2005-08-19T21:11:47Z")
Jebus. 🙂
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### Author:  [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2005, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-enjoy-mispronouncing/317800/10 "2005-08-19T21:17:01Z")
I like to add “ulate” to the end of verbs.
“I can totally understandulate” or “I’m going to do some Internet surfulation”.
In Montgomery, Alabama there was a restaurant for a thousand years called “The Elite”. Fifty years ago one of the state’s Foghorn Leghorn politicians, who really was a dumbass, called it “the ee-LIGHT”, and the name, which everybody _knew_ was mispronounced, just stuck. By the time they closed a few years ago they had long since answered their phone “thank you for calling the ee-LIGHT Cafe” and it was just sort of a local colloquial joke, and that’s one of my favorite mispronunciations.
Unfortunately you have absolutely no idea how many guests came into Montgomery from all over the nation and delighted in pointing out to the quaint save locals that “that word is pronounced e-LEET”, never grasping that “Yes, just because we were born south of Yonkers don’t mean we ain’t be got us no culturie and sophisticitationry.”
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### Author:  [@OhFace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OhFace)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2005, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-enjoy-mispronouncing/317800/11 "2005-08-19T21:18:01Z")
I like to say krauten for crouton. I have no idea where I got it from, but I’ve been saying it that way for as long as I can remember.
And I sometimes say babin-suit for bathing suit. Like a babe in a suit, babinsuit. Ha, ok I’m weird.
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### Author:  [@Anastasaeon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anastasaeon)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2005, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-enjoy-mispronouncing/317800/12 "2005-08-19T21:30:42Z")
My husband also says Vio-la, but it was from an old _Fishbar_ animation. I say “voila” now and then, however, it is in my lexicon, because I am half French, and my great aunt liked to use it a lot when she babysat my brother and I. So, naturally, everytime I say it, my husband repeats “Vio-la!” (_vee_o-la!)
I picked up a few from my husband, such as instead of saying “warm”, we say worm (sounds more like werm, though). I just got back from the cinema with my husband, and when I sat on the very warm seat, just exclaimed “worms! worms! The seat is worms!”
I pluralise singulars.
I singularise plurals.
There is no rhyme or reason to these two, I just throw it in where I feel like. “Do you like a present?” “I like a pillow.” “I need a drink of waters.” “I’ll go get the cameras.” When my husband is out with me in public and when get home, he sometimes tells me in his own way he was feeling horny but couldn’t do anything about it until we got home. He likes to say he was “feeling his oats.” So sometimes if I think he’s got a hard on in public, and we get home, I ask: “Did you feel an oat?”
Tummy=tumbly
Elbow=belbow
Fingers=finners
Hello=hellos
Kitten=kidden
Mostly, they’re just being playful. I don’t speak that way in public. I talk like that to my brother, a couple of close friends, and my husband. In front of my parents or in-laws? _Nooooos_!
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### Author:  [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2005, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-enjoy-mispronouncing/317800/13 "2005-08-19T21:35:19Z")
Em-bare-assing.
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### Author:  [@Omniscient](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omniscient)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2005, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-enjoy-mispronouncing/317800/14 "2005-08-19T21:37:10Z")
Tubamaba.
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### Author:  [@Amaranta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amaranta)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2005, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-enjoy-mispronouncing/317800/15 "2005-08-19T22:05:49Z")
> [@Omniscient](#):
>
> Tubamaba.
I also like saxamaphone and oboemaboe.
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### Author:  [@JohnBckWLD](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnBckWLD)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2005, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-enjoy-mispronouncing/317800/16 "2005-08-19T22:07:30Z")
The only one that comes to mind is _yuzz_ for _you all_.
There are 2 other common words I simply refuse to let pass my lips, because they sound awful when I speak them: Cookie (where I’ll use the variety as opposed to the general term) and gift certificate (where I’ll ask a merchant for a ‘gift voucher’).
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### Author:  [@Jennshark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jennshark)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2005, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-enjoy-mispronouncing/317800/17 "2005-08-19T22:10:11Z")
Edumacate
Chimbley
Lieberry
-osity on the end of things as an intensifier: bad-osity, good-osity, drive-osity, computer-osity, etc-osity, etc-osity
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### Author:  [@Ashes\_Ashes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ashes_Ashes)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2005, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-enjoy-mispronouncing/317800/18 "2005-08-19T22:14:38Z")
Chihuahua is fun to say as Chya hoo ah hoo ah.
Aspergrass
Tucson turns into Tooque sawn.
Bee yoot i muss for beautiful.
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### Author:  [@TheLoadedDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheLoadedDog)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2005, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-enjoy-mispronouncing/317800/19 "2005-08-19T22:21:15Z")
My dad loves doing these, and used to teach me them as a kid (which was a bit mean, as it led to embarrassing situations later), but I still use many of his:
- Viola!
- Vanilla folder
- Lesbian restaurant (middle eastern food)
- Beresk
I also like A-rab and EYE-talian, and of course the SDMB has given me ‘cow-orker’, and I often substitute ‘Og’ for "God now.
My sister and I also often speak in Blues Bros accents (which is good fun for really mundane stuff):
“You want I make a cup of tea?” “Yup”
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### Author:  [@Nic2004](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nic2004)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2005, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/words-you-enjoy-mispronouncing/317800/20 "2005-08-19T22:22:50Z")
For spray paint: spraint
and the proper pro-noun-sation of words
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