Posted on 03/15/2015 3:38:57 AM PDT by iowamark
Although English spelling is famously weird, there are at least some words that anyone learning English will easily get right — words like black, board, boat, clap, coat, cup, and hand. But put cup and board together and you get cupboard, which rhymes with Hubbard. Add kerchief to hand and you say it "hankerchif." Clearly English spelling is an evil trap devised to make the unaware look bad. "You said 'hand ker chief'? Oh. Ha ha. How terrible for you."
So we learn these exceptions, and we use them often enough that we remember them. But there are some words that we keep in the lexical cupboard and forget how they were supposed to be said. Then we recklessly go ahead and pronounce them as they're spelled...until someone starts to laugh.
Here are 10 words from the cupboard that will have you waving a white handkerchief.
waistcoat
A waistcoat is a kind of vest that goes under a tailcoat in evening attire. You could say (a bit inaccurately now) it's a coat that goes around your waist. But you ought not to say it's a "waist coat." No, you're supposed to say "weskit" or "wescut," and if you don't, you just failed your posh test no matter how spiff you look. This may not seem fair, but we tend to be economical with our pronunciation efforts when we can. If we treat the ai in waist like in again, and t like the t in soften, and the oa in coat like the o in women or the oi in going to when we say it "gonna," we've done to the word what we did to the garment — which used to be longer and have sleeves.
boatswain
Sailors were generally not famed for their high levels of literacy. It was a lower-class, lower-paying job. So they didn't really keep the spelling of the words they said in mind. And when they said them often, the words would get worn down, as often happens in language. It's a bit of a bother to have to say "boat swain" every time you're talking about the ship's officer in charge of equipment. So even before the time of Shakespeare, this word had gotten trimmed to "bosun" — and sometimes written that way. But it was very important for some language pedants at that time, and for a couple of centuries after, to show the origins of words in their spelling. So this one was preserved as boatswain. And now that most of us have nothing to do with boatswains, we might say it as written because we don't know otherwise.
gunwale
I'd rather drink from a funwale than be slung over a gunwale…no, wait, drink from a funnel than be slung over a gunnel…no, but… Well, never mind that. A gunwale, pronounced "gunnel" since at least the 1500s, is the wooden edge on the top of the side of a boat. It has nothing to do with whales, but everything to do with wales — not as in Prince of Wales but as in the wale of a fabric or the wale (also spelled weal) raised on your flesh after you're struck with a rod (perhaps for slinging someone over the gunwale). It's originally a word for a ridge. But if you say "gun wale," you might be the next one overboard.
forecastle
Some people who know that this is said like "fokes'll" really want you to know they know, and so they spell it fo'c'sle. The worn-down pronunciation turns the upper forward deck of an old ship into something more like a foxhole, but folks'll say what fo'c'sle say, especially if they're sailors, and when you're dealing with the speech of sailors, any spelling-based forecast'll probably be wrong because the focus'll shift in the pronunciation. Still, the spelling fo'c'sle has only been around since the mid-1800s, and fore-castle with a hyphen is often seen in texts from before that, which suggests the sea-eroded pronunciation of this word is newer than of gunwale and boatswain.
blackguard
Have you ever heard someone call someone a "blaggard"? It's actually the same word you see written as blackguard. It originally referred to household menials or, perhaps, hired thugs — people who wore black and were not really on the level of real guards. By the 1700s blackguard had come to be used for any crook or lowlife. And just as the sense lost its particular distinctions, the pronunciation wore down too: the "kg" easily became just "g," and the second syllable lost its stress. This seems to have happened first in Irish English, which was showing spellings like blaggard and blagaird by the 1800s.
clapboard
"Clapboard is pronounced as it's spelled!" you might say. And, true, for many people it is. But this word, for a kind of wooden siding, was already being spelled sometimes as clabord in the 1600s, though it had first appeared in English just the previous century. Well, why not? Cupboard was already being said as "cubbard" by the 1500s. Wondering who the blackguards are who sanded down the clapboards and cupboards? They may well have been blackguards — domestic menials, not highly literate, who turned "pb" into "b" as easily as they turned "kg" in to "g," and the rest fell off from there. (Why isn't blackboard like "blabbard"? For one thing, "k" and "b" aren't said in the same place in the mouth, like "k" and "g" or "p" and "b" are; for another, it's newer, and is best known to educated speakers.)
victual
This word, which is a general term for food supplies, did not get digested by English. No! Actually, we borrowed it from the Old French vitaile, so it easily came to be said in English as "vittle." Yes, this is the same word you see spelled vittle, usually in the plural, sometimes preceded by the word tender. So where did the misleading spelling come from? Latin. Vitaile is a digested form of Latin victualia, and in the 1500s, when the English started learning more about the Latin and Greek classics, people started spelling this word as victual (and similar versions) — not with the intention of changing the pronunciation, but just to show off the noble origins of the word. Snobs.
gooseberry
If, like me, you're a colonial lout, you may not have known that the "proper" way to say this is like "goozbry," with the "oo" as in "book." Funny. I'm sure you don't say raspberry like "rasp berry." If we can say "razzberry," why not at least "goozberry" — if not the very British version with only two syllables? Probably because we don't eat them nearly as much as raspberries. And no one blows gooseberries like they blow raspberries at objects of scorn...such as English spelling.
forehead
Some of you may see this one and do a facepalm or headdesk. "We say it 'fore-head'!" Many of us certainly do...here and now. But perhaps you may have seen this little rhyme:
There was a little girl,
And she had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good
She was very, very good,
And when she was bad she was horrid.
Yes. It rhymes forehead with horrid. This is not a poem by some British blackguard, either. It's by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, one of the great American poets of the 1800s. The "forrid" version is in fact still the first pronunciation given in the Oxford English Dictionary, and in Merriam-Webster and Collins too. (Not in the American Heritage Dictionary, though!) Centuries ago there was a fight between the h and the r, and the r won (though it later lost to the c in forecastle). But many of us now don't know there ever was such a fight, and we just say it the way it looks.
Worcester
This word — the name of a city in England and another one in Massachusetts, and part of the name of Worcestershire sauce — plays a double trick. Many of us know that it's pronounced "Wister" (or, in Massachusetts, "Wista"). But many of those who don't know that — and actually many of those who do, too — see a letter in the word that's not there. I can't even tell you how many times I've heard people say this word is spelled like "Worchester." But look up: there's no h. It's a mean trick, because the cester in this word comes from exactly the same Old English word (meaning "town" or "camp") that gives us the chester in Winchester and Dorchester (two more Boston-area places). Another British place name like this is Cirencester, which used to be pronounced as — can you guess? — "Sissiter."
Ants - nasty little critters who ruin your picnic
Aunts - nice ladies who give you gifts and kisses
Do not pronounce the two the same!! Every!!
Try saying mozzarella (moots-a rell) as mots-za-rell-a in my part of the country and you’ll get laughed out of the pizzeria when you order your apizza (ah peats).
Ricotta - rau- cout, not rick-cot-a
For some reason, people always think I’m from Boston and say I’ve a Bostonian accent, though I’ve lived in the New Haven, Connecticut area all my life. And yes, we know we have the best pizza in the world in New Haven. :-)
Does any one else say drawer like draw-er or quarter like quarr- ter?
Mis-CHEEVE-e-us, instead of MIS-cha-vus.
“Aloha, Oregon. Don’t go there and pronounce it like you’re in Hawaii.”
Of Chili, NY - She-lee, not chill - ee
And don’t ask what happened when my Omahaian husband took me back to Nebraska for a visit. Apparently, they don’t speak French there.
Papillion, Ne. pa-pill-yon Not pap-ee-own.
His family gets a big laugh out of my accent, but I don’t say cement like see-ment
This is a first amendment issue.
What kind of civilization would we live in if it could control everybody enough to make pronounce words according to monolithic standard. What other things would force upon things would it try to force on the populace. I felt it was good that George Bush never pronounced Saddam Hussein name correctly.
I don’t even say bosun anymore. I just say Bos with a long O.
I was taught to pronounce it like ‘eh’ but with the lips rounded for an ‘o’.
The sound is similar to the ‘eu’in French (”Meuse”), and close to how many yung’uns now pronounce the ‘o’ in words like “move” (instead of ‘moove’) ...
LOL. I think they believe that they sound more intelligent.
Living in Indian country, I thought everyone know who Cochise was. It’s the county we live in as well as the famous Indian outlaw.
And then we had an East coast visitor who, with a straight face, called it Cockcheese County.
“Foilage” for “foliage” is my pet peeve. I’ve even heard newscasters mispronounce that word.
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Yep
I’m from Tahlequah
Isnt that the old term for zombie?
:)
I knew a Krista Kaiser from Koln who pronounced that oeh as the near “oi” - aw-eh She was a retired schoolteacher.
I like that. Answer the pa hon ee baby.
Yesterday I had lunch with a bachelor pal who travels a good bit on his own, often to Vegas.
He said his last trip a couple weeks ago he was waiting to board when he spots this sexy (kinda pretty but really sexy) woman sitting in the waiting area.
Gets on the plane and who's sitting next to him but Miss X.
My buddy is a good talker and pretty quickly she tells him she's a dancer in Vegas, originally from our rural area.
Claimed she had a boyfriend, etc., and talked about some other heavier stuff too, and was quite conversant and even bright-sounding, until she told him her stage name: Perryom.
Perryom? he says.
Yes, you know, like the champagne. Don Perryom.
You need to hear Bo Dietl—he’s truly his own lexicographer. He may have trained under Norm Crosby.
physicality
I’m pretty sure Jed and Granny pronounced it “vittles.”
Well, while you are in Massachusetts, have a go at Medford and Hyde Park. One is Meffa and the other is Hi Pak.
Everyone who was born and raised in Western New York State.
My thesis adviser, who was from Worcester, MA, kind of urban, saw our neighbors pony, and exclaimed, "Look! A haahs! A haahs!"
No one but his wife knew what he was talking about --
Cairo, Illinois versus Cairo, Egypt (if they haven’t already been mentioned)
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