I know there were earlier similar threads, but I didn’t think waking them back up would be appreciated.
I was working on a crossword, and one of the answers was “tang.” I’ve seen it used in books, “There was a tang of salt on the sea air” and such, but I’ve never heard anyone actually use it in conversation. A few others are “abomination”, “chimera”, and “peremptory.” How about you?
Re: chimera. I did once hear someone use it in conversation. Or maybe it was a related word like chimerical. Anyway, it took me half a second to realize what word he was using because it wasn’t the pronunciation I’d been using internally.
Mountebank
Legerdemain
Demesne
Tchotchke
“Niggardly” - meaning cheap, stingy
I’ve never heard it used for obvious reasons.
I’ve heard chimera used a few times in relation to genetics and, yes, for the first 40 years of my life assumed it was Chim-era pronounced like chimpanzee. Likewise for hyperbole where I still have to make special effort to not say “hyper-bowl” because that was my mental pronunciation for decades until finally hearing it spoken.
Likewise for hyperbole where I still have to make special effort to not say “hyper-bowl” because that was my mental pronunciation for decades until finally hearing it spoken.
I was only 12 or so when I learned this, but I’d had the same issue with Penelope. And of course because I remember being dumbfounded when I learned of it, _every_time I see the word I’m reminded of how I didn’t know the pronunciation, and so always stumble over it, even these four decades later.
I always worry when I hear a word I know pronounced for the first time by someone else. Who knows if they’re pronouncing it correctly? If I were to start doing the same, and causing others to do the same, we’d end up in a situation similar to half of the people pronouncing pecan properly, and the other half saying “pee-can.”
This is me with “infrared”. Whenever I encounter it in print, I have to remind myself that it does not rhyme with “scared.”
Similarly, as a youngster I’d always assumed that Greenwich Village was pronounced Green Witch. This ended when I was embarrassingly corrected by my sister, who continued to tease me about it for decades.
mmm
I’ve used “tang” in many conversations, but always in discussions about sailboat hardware.
“Seasons Greetings”.
I’ve never heard anybody else say it either, come to think of it.
There are words that come up all the time in crossword puzzles but that I can’t remember ever hearing in real life.
One of them is “rah,” usually clued as something like “stadium cheer.” Granted, I don’t spend a whole lot of time hanging around stadiums, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say “rah.”
Another is “nosh,” which apparently means “snack.” Another is “nene,” which is apparently Hawaii’s state bird.
There is the beverage brand Tang. IIRC, astronauts took it to space.
Continuing the crossword references, I’ve never ever heard ( much less said myself ) anybody use the word “ecru” in describing the color of something. Never heard anybody refer to an “Etui” in which they keep jewelry or whatever.
Denouement.
I assume it’s pronounced something like day-new-MWAH, but I have no idea.
Maybe not every last one, but I have heard a whole bunch of the suggested words said. So YMMV with some of those words—I think we need to work a little harder to come up with examples of words that essentially only occur in print. Super obsolete words will not work either, IMO, as nobody is going to use them in normal writing.
The last one I discovered I was mispronouncing was “serif,” which I had always thought had the emphasis on the second syllable. I found this out when I was corrected, in public and with glee, by my boss at the time. That was ten years ago, and I’m sure there’ll be another one someday. I still have no idea how to pronounce “banal” correctly, but from looking it up online, it seems like no one else does either.
edit: not what the OP was asking. I’m sure there’s something, but it’s none of the words cited so far.
caesura
Man oh man I wanted that to be a hard C.
I like to think I’m pretty good at reading words with the correct pronunciation. This is usually born out to be true when I hear the word spoken correctly. My problem is that even if I hear the word correctly in my head, I can’t say it correctly. I suspect it it similar to how I can hear a tune correctly in my head, but can’t hum it.
I do have trouble with dinosaur names. Fortunately when I was reading lots of dinosaur books out loud I had a 5 year old to help me with the hard ones.
I made an ass of myself referring to a bar or club named Charybdis. I think I said chardy-bus.
Really? How about sung?
Warm seasons greeting to you all from Menard’s!
That may be regional - I hear it all the time. I even know a restaurant called “Knish Nosh”
It is closer to day-noo-MON, but that N is the French nasal. The IPA would be /ˌdeɪ nuˈmɑ̃/. You can hear it here:
As for the question: I find I have trouble remembering with most words. The main way I find out I’ve not heard it said is that I hear someone say it and look it up, finding out I’ve been saying it wrong.