Words which, if pronounced correctly, will result in people thinking you’re a nut:
victuals (already covered)
consummate (the accent is actually on the second syllable)
Short-lived (long “i”)
I thought bury rhymed with jury, but it has the same pronuciation as berry.
Also, I used to pronounced vague “vahg” as opposed to “vehg.”
Rio Grande - prounounced it with a “Grand” instead of “Grahn-day.”
Hee, hee these are funny, and I used to do a lot. But hors d’oeuvres I still mispronounce as whores de ah vors, deliberately, because it is so much funnier that way.
Yeah, ditto on yosemite. As a teenager living in Denver, riding the bus and directing the driver to let me off at, uh, YOZ MIGHT, well, I was lucky and got off at the right stop, anyway.
Here at the Lazy B, everyone, and I do mean everyone, pronounces the word liaison as LI ZON, instead of the correct pronunciation of either lee A zon or LAY uh zon. (I know there are a couple minor variations on these two pronunciations. I’m just pointing out the example above is NOT one of them) Don’t even bother trying to correct anyone either. It’s a Boeing word, after all, dontcha know.
Forte, Something a person does well. Pronounced, fort.
Forte, (music) Loud; strong. Pronounced for-tay.
My eight grade english teacher made sure that we got it right. I have gone through life listening to almost everyone use the latter pronunciation for the former meaning. Some people correct me if I say “fort”. “Say, don’t you mean, for-tay?” DaToad, raising his voice: “yeah, yeah, that’s what I mean.”
DaToad, go here for an interesting article about “forte”. http://randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19971114 Maybe your English teacher was wrong!
I had never used the word “debacle” in conversation or heard it for that matter, and always read it as DEB-a-cul. Then a friend used it and I of course insisted he was pronouncing it incorrectly. Also, in grade school I read a lot of spy novels by Robert Ludlum and the like. It seemed people were always going on these REN-des-vouses all the time. I remember when it hit me that they were of course on a rendezvous
Thanks for the reference. I have saved the site to my favorites. From now on I’ll just say, “it’s not my strong point” and sidestep the pronunciation debate!
One of my mispronunciations was corrected by my (then) 7 year old son! I thought it was dip-low-DOCK-uss, but “Mom, it’s dip-LODD-ick-uss.” The dinosaur Diplodocus.
I have more (many more) but I must run off to work.
Thanks for this thread. It was a lot of fun, and educational too!
Yeah, annhiliate. That’s a good one, I knew the word before i saw it written. I thought the written word was pronounced “ann-hilly-ate” and meant something similar, but not qute the same thing.
And WTF is up with the word “hegemony”? I always thought it was “heh-jeh-MO-nee,” but all the really elitist folks in my grad program say “heh-JEH-mo-nee.”
Oops! Didn’t mean to post in BOLD! (Sure wish the editing function was enabled!)
I read THe Lion, THe Witch & The Wardrobe as a youngun & thought they camped in PAV-uh-lons. (Pavilions). Don’t know why I ignored the second I.
Of course I still say ASHfault (asphalt) even though I know perfectly well there’s no H there - ASSfault just sounds weird.
Since Mr. Pol teases me about it - it’s now blacktop or macadam.
That’s funny. I thought “ass fault” was the anatomical term for “butt crack.”
Learn something new every day, I do.
Living in Chicago, it’s always fun to be on the bus going down lasalle and hear the driver call out the “Goethe” stop. You never know what you’re going to get. (Most often it’s “Go-thee”.)
Of course, in St Louis there’s a street named Spoede that everyone seems to agreed is correctly pronounced Spay-dee, so go figure.
I, too, have had trouble with ‘subtle’ and ‘victuals’ (this one only resolved moments ago while I read this thread) among others.
The one my parents still laugh about is me telling them how much I like clerestory windows. Silly me, I thought they were pronounced clare-ES-tory. Decided not to become and architect after all.
Learned to my embarrassment back in grade school that it’s not: fan’-a-tic or fan’-a-tic-al.
I was taught that it’s dip-lo-DOKE-uss.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by FireUnderpantsBoobs *
**
[QUOTE I was taught that it’s dip-lo-DOKE-uss. **[/QUOTE]
Well, FireUnderpantsBoobs, you got me to thinking that maybe I had it wrong. After all, I haven’t had to call a dinosaur by scientific name for nearly 15 years! I checked the Merriam-Webster On-Line site and listened to the friendly man pronounce the word DIPLODOCUS for me. It was just like my son said. So I guess you and I share this on our “words I thought I knew how to pronounce (but was wrong!)” list!
YES! Me too! Thank God I wasn’t the only one… “Things have gone AW-ree”… Jesus, I can still hear them laughing… runs away sobbing
Seriously though, how the hell do you pronounce the word “knichi”? I just got the lead in Barefoot in the Park and no one can seem to agree on how to say it, and it’s not in any of the dictionaries I’ve looked in, and a search on the web comes up with some pretty strange stuff. Anyone??
There ARE multiple pronunciations for some words, you know…
While I’m sure I mispronounce plenty of words, the story I remember was from my friend in high school…
We were riding in the car and he showed me this picture he was working on for his art class… Some of the shading was weird and he goes “yeah I ran out of beeg” “What?!” I said, trying to figure out what the hell he was talking about “I didn’t mix enough beeg paint to fill in this part” “Beeg?” “yeah…you know…like tan” “Oooooh… you mean ‘bayje’ (bad phonetic spelling for beige of course)”… He was embarassed, rightly so being as interested in art as he was… However mispronunciation was the least of his problems…
I’m going under the assumption that when he says it was pronounced “Quay” he’s hearing the sound “kway”, because the word Quay is prounounced “kee.” How’s that for circular, huh?
And personally, I can’t believe this has gone this far without anyone trotting out the “Throat-Warbler Mangrove” joke.
Banal.
I always say BAY-null, but apparently it’s buh-NALL.
whatever. Too late to change now.