Chatfilter: What words have you misread or missaid for a long time?

September 6, 2023 6:15 PM

#metafilterfundraiser2023 Today I learned that the little picture on your web browser is a favicon. Not a flavicon - which is how I managed to read it since the auction last year...I discovered my mistake trying to auction off cortex's stained glass version of MetaFilter's flavicon - which you can bid on here.

I also like to say aclove instead of alcove.

What words have you said incorrectly and how did you discover you got it wrong?

posted by skunk pig to Writing & Language (84 answers total)

GIF.
posted by SPrintF at 6:21 PM on September 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

I said infuriorated instead of infuriated until waay later than I should have. And when I say way later, I mean that a friend corrected me while we were in grad school. I just never noticed I was doing it.
posted by umbú at 6:43 PM on September 6, 2023

I'm sure I'm not the first, but I thought the word "misled" was pronounced "MY-zld" until I was like 35.
posted by tristeza at 6:45 PM on September 6, 2023 [11 favorites]

I just realized a few months ago that I say odviously instead of obviously. But at least I don’t say bolth.
posted by sacrifix at 6:46 PM on September 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

Until about 6 years ago, I thought the drugs chemically derived from barbituric acid were generically called "bar-BICH-you-əts". Listening to a Karina Longworth podcast where she mentions those, I was howling, thinking she was in error.

She was not.
posted by german_bight at 7:25 PM on September 6, 2023 [4 favorites]

Mind blown german_blight. I have never seen, nor heard, the extra "r"? Rabbit hole time...
posted by Windopaene at 7:29 PM on September 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

@german_bight, that's how I've said it forever, too, and how most of my medical providers I can remember every saying it do, too. I know there is an "r" there but at least in my parts of the US it's elided such that you don't really hear it.

Are you referring to the missing "r" sound or is there another radically different way to say it that I have missed?
posted by rhiannonstone at 7:30 PM on September 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

Are you referring to the missing "r" sound or is there another radically different way to say it that I have missed?

Longworth was saying something like: "bar-BICH-errəts". I do not know what the canonical pronunciation is, or what anything even means any more.
posted by german_bight at 7:42 PM on September 6, 2023 [3 favorites]

I was embarrassingly about 25 when I realized that “epitome” wasn’t pronounced “Eppy-tome”. I also thought the guitar brand “Epitone” was a pun on the word, since obviously they rhymed. Weirdly I was aware of the “ep-it-tow-me” pronunciation, but thought they were variants of the same word. Brains are weird.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 8:24 PM on September 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

To this day I pronounce an l-sound in “folk” and no amount of dictionaries or mockery will ever get me to stop.
posted by ejs at 8:49 PM on September 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

I have an acquaintance who used to pronounce tarantula as ta-ran-TOO-la rather than tuh-RAN-chua-la. Weirdly, he seemed to know the correctly-pronounced tarantula, but had never connected it with the written form.
posted by SPrintF at 8:52 PM on September 6, 2023

I was in my mid to late twenties when I heard someone say the word “biopic” and realized it wasn’t pronounced “bi-opic”. Literally never connected those dots until hearing it.
posted by tan_coul at 9:08 PM on September 6, 2023 [7 favorites]

I refuse to believe that they're "pincers" and not "pinchers," all evidence to the contrary.
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:17 PM on September 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

It was years and years before I realized that when people wrote about the "conceit" of a story or other work of art, it wasn't a typo for "concept."
posted by egregious theorem at 9:24 PM on September 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

I think I was in my late 40s before I realized that "awry" was NOT pronounced /AWE-ree/.
I always knew the word properly as spoken, but when written, I did not recognize it to be the same word... even though I think I realized that /AWE-ree/ meant the same as /ah-RYE/...
Weird. I still have a bit of a disconnect trying to write it phonetically. lol
posted by itsflyable at 9:30 PM on September 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

It remains baffling to me that Hass avocados are not Haas avocados.
posted by eponym at 9:32 PM on September 6, 2023 [5 favorites]

I never noticed the second "a" in withdrawal until about age 30. I thought it was "withdrawl."
posted by oxisos at 9:44 PM on September 6, 2023

The word segue is a problem for me.
posted by vunder at 9:49 PM on September 6, 2023 [4 favorites]

My mother’s family (and I) all pronounce the word “stir” as though it’s spelled “steer”. (Upstate NY, pretty bland MidAtlantic accents otherwise). It did not cause too much issue until Chemistry in college when I got laughed at for calling it a “steer bar”. But college was also where I heard and was vindicated by Bob Marley’s “Stir(steer) It Up” so….

We do not have trouble with “whir” or “fir”, so I don’t know where the stir thing came from…but I do also have trouble not calling the animal a “beer”.
posted by Tandem Affinity at 10:20 PM on September 6, 2023

Vunder, while the Segway brand name infuriates me for its misspelling, it keeps me straight on the original’s pronunciation… thought that might help if you haven’t given it a try….
posted by Tandem Affinity at 10:22 PM on September 6, 2023

I learned only two weeks ago that it's "balsamic", not "balsalmic", and now it sounds wrong without the extra "l"...
posted by catabananza at 10:39 PM on September 6, 2023

Response by poster: I so appreciate everyone's stories! Thanks for sharing.
posted by skunk pig at 10:54 PM on September 6, 2023

English is not my first language and I learnt most of it by reading. So I have had many of these.

But a persistent one is saying the "b" in words that end with "bing".

So I say climBing and bomBing.
posted by Zumbador at 11:03 PM on September 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

When a small person, my read-all-the-time daughter complained in the car that her smaller sister was fenge-ing sleep.

Umbú: I said infuriorated instead of infuriated . . .
25 years ago an enquiry into the corruption of Irish politicians was chaired by Justice Michael Moriarty. The media at the time habitually called it the Moriarity Tribunal - Every time I had to shout Moriarrrrghty at the radio.

Several years ago my least likeable and sadly-ambitious colleague was bull-shitting The Institute into starting a new degree in Brewing & Distilling. At a planning meeting he presented a long list of equipment which would have to be purchased. My redoubtable crap-detecting Head of Department said something innocent like "What about this (I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing this right) fiabilimeter? It costs €4,000". After a while we worked out that Dr Bluster was requesting a machine for measuring how friable was the mash. Red face meets schadenfreude.
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:20 AM on September 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

When I was in high school, I wrote “anotherwards” in an essay, and the teacher corrected it to “in other words”.
posted by wittgenstein at 1:49 AM on September 7, 2023 [8 favorites]

It took me a long time to stop saying "gymnastics" as "gymlastics"
posted by EndsOfInvention at 2:04 AM on September 7, 2023

Tandem Affinity, the near/square merger is definitely a thing. Are you secretly from New Zealand? As a transplant to NZ, I prefer to think of it as the beer/bear merger myself. Much more dangerous! Except no bears here so maybe it doesn't really matter.

Also nthing the barbiturates thing. In fact, had you asked me before this conversation, I would totally have spelt it barbituates.
posted by inexorably_forward at 2:36 AM on September 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

I learned to pronounce Darjeeling tea instead of Dajeerling tea when The Darjeeling Express movie came out.
posted by waving at 2:51 AM on September 7, 2023

I learned yesterday that I pronounce "epistolary" (I always said it epi-STO-lury) incorrectly.
posted by tomp at 3:59 AM on September 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

As a kid, I thought lingerie was linger-EE.

It also took me a surprisingly-long time (given that my father was one) to realize that colonel is KERN-ul, not col-on-el.

I didn't learn indictment was not in-DICT-ment until I was an adult.
posted by belladonna at 4:03 AM on September 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

My most recent one (besides any that I may or may not have realized via these comments) is mercerized, as in mercerized cotton.
Whenever I first encountered the word, clearly I thought "yep, those are sure some letters" and decided it was "mercenized", as in cotton that's gotten really into doing war for money.
Figured that one out yesterday.
posted by Baethan at 4:26 AM on September 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

I added an extra syllable to conflagration for most of my life. "Conflagaration".

Pretty much everybody does this for mischievous - "mischevious" - so I suspect I'm probably in the minority pronouncing it "correctly".

Oh yes, and I was middle aged before finally realising that "segue" and "segway" are not 2 different words, but the latter is the pronounciation of the first. (I pronounced it "seeg")
posted by snarfois at 4:31 AM on September 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

You ever see that episode of Parks and Rec where they sit around making fun of a character for the way they pronounce Bagel? That's me. Like, literally. And with THAT word.

I watched that episode and kind of freaked out because pretty much verbatim that happened to me in my 20s when I was in film school.

Years later, I was in LA and went to visit a friend who'd been one of the "bullies' (for lack of a better word). She was the cinematographer on a feature film I directed in the 90s, but now she was making a living as a writer in Los Angeles. "And this is my husband," she said, introducing me, he writes on Parks and Rec.

I still to this day do not hear the difference between the way I pronounce it vs. the way others do.

Last week I went to a poetry reading and one of the performers read her poem and pronounced the word cacophony as co-co-phone-y. It was very weird.
posted by dobbs at 4:35 AM on September 7, 2023 [7 favorites]

In this episode of the erudite podcast In Our Time, 3 different mycologists pronounce "fungi" in 3 different ways.
posted by snarfois at 4:36 AM on September 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

You ever see that episode of Parks and Rec where they sit around making fun of a character for the way they pronounce Bagel

You might also have a very odd way of pronouncing Community. ;)
posted by jacquilynne at 4:45 AM on September 7, 2023 [14 favorites]

Someone upthread mentioned segue and I know in my brain that it is seg-way but in my heart, it is just seg.

I have never been entirely clear which pronunciation of mischievous is correct but I have just learned there is no I after the V, so I guess that answers that.
posted by jacquilynne at 4:51 AM on September 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

Holy cow dobbs, i am also a "bagel" mispronouncer and have never seen that clip, and... that has been my entire life.

(I think it's Community and not Parks and Rec though)
posted by Sparky Buttons at 5:02 AM on September 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

macabre

In my head, it has always been "mack uh bray". Then it was "muh caaab ruh". Still never "muh caaab."

For one of my friends, it's "demonstrative." de-mon-STRAIGHT-ive. You demonstrate it.

For one of my students, it was "constituents." con-sti-TUE-ents. Like the con-sti-TUE-shun.
posted by Ms Vegetable at 5:04 AM on September 7, 2023

So many of these "I always mispronounced it so-and-so" make me wonder what the right pronunciation is. As a non-native speaker of English, there are tons of words I only ever see in writing. I have no idea how they should sound.

Ms Vegetable: For one of my friends, it's "demonstrative." de-mon-STRAIGHT-ive. You demonstrate it.

I'm going to guess that's wrong, or you would not have posted. Now I'm going to guess at what it should sound like. Is it de-MON-struh-tive?
posted by Too-Ticky at 5:16 AM on September 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

Infurianating here. And honestly, all sorts of other words. I was a severe case of child who read too much, and I’ve been rooting out ingrained mispronunciations my whole life, but in my fifties I have reconciled myself to knowing that there will always be more.
posted by LizardBreath at 5:18 AM on September 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

It was just two weeks ago that I discovered "whilst" is pronounced "while-st" not "will-st." I'm in my mid-40s.
posted by notquitejane at 5:25 AM on September 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

Too-Ticky: Yes, it's supposed to be "de-MON-struh-tive."

And "constituents" should be con-STI-tue-ents. I don't know why.
posted by Ms Vegetable at 5:33 AM on September 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

askance: not ASK-ance but a-SKANCE. Someone looking at you askance is giving you a sideways look, not a questioning one.

I only recently, in my fifties, discovered that the word I saw written as "onesie" and the word I heard pronounced as "wunzy" were the same word. (The former I always assumed was French and pronounced something like onna-ZIE.)
posted by kindall at 5:41 AM on September 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

kindall: I only recently, in my fifties, discovered that the word I saw written as "onesie" and the word I heard pronounced as "wunzy" were the same word.

On Dutch small ad sites, people offer up 'wansies'. I try not to cry when I see that.
posted by Too-Ticky at 5:44 AM on September 7, 2023

Y'alls honesty has allowed me to admit something: Until very recently, like this year, I didn't understand/clock/recognize that the name the of the band The Beatles wasn't a label describing them as bugs, but a sort of pun with the musical word "beat" in it.

On preview: Similar to Kindall, that when written out, "tsk tsk tsk" isn't said aloud "tisk tisk tisk", but as a noise you make by sucking air into your mouth past your tongue pressed to the roof of your mouth, accompanied by wagging your finger or shaking your head.
posted by Gorgik at 5:50 AM on September 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

in my house we call this "the reader's disease", and it's transmitted by having enough books lying around that people who've heard words and read words will not always link the two.

4th grade me got in a straight-up argument with the lady helping out in reading that day over "no, no, I know what a 'ron-day-voo' is, but that can't be this word, because this word is 'REN-DEZ-VOUS'." The lady was my mom. She still talks to me, but some days I long for the confidence of a 9yo truly hooked on phonics.

I didn't pronounce it wrong, but when I read that Helen Keller had a fever as a child and was "hence mute," I assumed "hence mute" was some specific kind of muteness.

It's tricky, because I don't want my kids to feel like they're wrong when they just don't know....but I don't want them finding out how rendezvous is pronounced the way I did, either. So I usually just tell them how I've heard "Eurydice" or whatever.
posted by adekllny at 5:57 AM on September 7, 2023 [5 favorites]

And yes, to confirm, it was Community that her husband was the writer on.
posted by dobbs at 6:08 AM on September 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

My sister:

Episcopal

She pronounced it "eee-puh-SCOP-uhl".

It should be "eee-PISS-cuh-pull".

Names:

Penelope

In head: "penny-lope". In reality: "pen-ELL-uh-pee".

Hermione

In head: "herm-eee-own". In reality: "her-MY-uh-nee". I think.
posted by Ms Vegetable at 6:27 AM on September 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

I was going to list “quay” as a word I had always mentally mispronounced while reading until I encountered it in a song lyric. But I just looked it up in the online Merriam-Webster and discovered that they list the apparent phonetic pronunciation (kway) as a legitimate option to the typical “key” pronunciation. Now I wonder if that’s always been an alternate pronunciation or just the result of enough people reading it the way I did.
posted by tdismukes at 6:37 AM on September 7, 2023

I’m sitting here still gobsmacked that the word is not barbituate.
posted by ellenaim at 6:44 AM on September 7, 2023 [6 favorites]

barbituate
Today I learned.
Also I think a lot of people pronounce it this way, it's even the punch line of a joke about a bear who insists that he doesn't do drugs, which just wouldn't work at all without this mispronunciation.
posted by Daily Alice at 7:03 AM on September 7, 2023

Years ago, in drama school, one of my speech teachers once asked us to come up with a list of words we each had trouble pronouncing, so we could work on them - "anything that's particularly giving you trouble," he said. ....Ironically, for me, one of those words was "particularly" and I said so. He thought I was teasing him for a while. (I still say it "pa-TICK-yer-lee" and I can't shake the feeling that that's not quite right.)

Going back even further - in high school we made an anti-nuke movie (hi, Cold War adolescence here). We had a really intense group rap session with the whole cast when we were making it, and I remember about midway through someone noticed that different people in our group were pronouncing the word "nuclear" in different ways - some said "noo-klee-ar", and some said "noo-kyoo-lar". The director and I had a post-talk meeting in which we decided to incorporate that as a character choice worked out which of the characters would pronounce it one way and which the other.

....And going way back to when I was about four, I would always refer to comics as "com-in-icks", which my mother found adorable.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:05 AM on September 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

I have so many (this is linked to my learning disability), but I'll give a funny one:

The name Sean.

I thought this was pronounced "seen" and I thought all the "Shauns" out there spelled it that way. I didn't meet a "Sean" in real life until my 20s.
posted by coffeecat at 7:20 AM on September 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

OK, was there anyone who didn't think it was "barbituates"? I didn't even understand what german_bight was getting at.
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:53 AM on September 7, 2023 [5 favorites]

The name Sean.

I thought this was pronounced "seen" and I thought all the "Shauns" out there spelled it that way. I didn't meet a "Sean" in real life until my 20s.

Look, Sean Bean, you can be Seen Bean or Shawn Bawn, but you can't have it both ways.
posted by xedrik at 7:57 AM on September 7, 2023 [7 favorites]

Speaking as a Sean, there are many, many people who pronounce it as seen.
posted by sacrifix at 8:04 AM on September 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

As a kid, I would call a piece of rigid headgear a “helment.”

As a 20-something I learned that “rapport” is how you spell the word I had been hearing all my life as “repore” and not, in fact, a different word pronounced as it is spelled. It never once occurred to me that I hadn't ever seen “repore” in writing.

I have also been a member of the “segue / segway / seeg” confusion club.
posted by D.Billy at 8:20 AM on September 7, 2023

Here in ATL a major street called Ponce De Leon is pronounced PONTS-duh-LEE-on. Elsewhere in Georgia the town of Albany is awl-BEN-nee.

I got hooked by phonics once: to this day, I still do not understand why anemone is not pronounced ANN-uh-moan. It took several moments before my teacher convinced me she not pulling my leg the way my dad would at home.

My dad loved malaprops and spoonerisms and puns and deliberately comically wrong pronunciations. I remember being little and dad reading aloud from My Tale is Twisted! Or the Storal to This Mory by Colonel Stoopnagle, a thoroughly malapropped retelling of Aesop’s fables and other tales: “The Noy and the Buts,” “The Mog in the Danger,” “The Shoolf in Cleep’s Woathing,” you get the idea. Six-year-old me loved it – it made me feel smart because I already knew the “right“ pronunciations.

Dad died when I was in my late 20s, but one of his comic mispronunciations lived stealthily on, unbeknownst to me. Back in college, I made what I was certain was a trenchant comment in an American literature honors seminar. It was then that I learned that denouement was not pronounced dee-NOW-ment. The looks I got from my classmates and my professor. I already had a reputation for wordplay, and I had to convince them that I was not kidding. And then they had to convince me of the correct pronunciation.

Nice score from beyond, Dad.
posted by conscious matter at 8:30 AM on September 7, 2023 [8 favorites]

I thought this was pronounced "seen" and I thought all the "Shauns" out there spelled it that way. I didn't meet a "Sean" in real life until my 20s.

Relatedly, I'm guessing few people get that Shawn the Sheep is a pun. In the British pronunciation it sounds like 'Shorn' Get it?
posted by vacapinta at 8:48 AM on September 7, 2023 [5 favorites]

Count me in on the "can't pronounce bagel with out causing spouse to chuckle" club. It's frustrating, because, like folks above, I cannot for the life of me hear a difference in how I'm pronouncing it from the people who claim to pronounce it correctly.

I've taken to saying "I'm going to go get some Round Foods for breakfast." Some "wheaty toroids".
posted by german_bight at 8:53 AM on September 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

I thought hors d'oeuvre and or-derves were different things. I mentally pronounced the first one "oars d'voars.'
posted by ramenopres at 9:09 AM on September 7, 2023

I have the bagel thing with the word ambulance apparently. Apparently because I can't actually disconcern the difference between the way I say it and the way everyone else does but the difference is often hilarious -- for other people.
posted by Mitheral at 9:18 AM on September 7, 2023

The classic for young people is calling pasta "biss-getty".

So I say climBing and bomBing...
1993 film 'Six Degrees of Separation' dialogue mentions a possible class aspect to crisp enunciation.

In my house we call this "the reader's disease"...
As a former young autodidact, I'm not too fussy about pronunciation, and I indulge in malapropisms more than necessary.
posted by ovvl at 9:30 AM on September 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

Speaking as a Sean, there are many, many people who pronounce it as seen.

Tangentially related:

I know a Colin, and he's really REALLY annoyed that Colin Powell pronounced his name "Colon" because that's what people sometimes call him.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:50 AM on September 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

I LOVED hearing Maeve Higgen pronounce "tortoise" as "TOR toyse" on a Wait Wait Don't Tell Me segment (start around 5:06, then pop in again at 6:50 to hear everyone realize it's not just the Irish pronounciation and Maeve realize she's never seen the word written before).
posted by LKWorking at 10:01 AM on September 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

Jon Mitchell, brains are weird. Also I think the guitar brand is Epiphone :-)
posted by fridgebuzz at 10:55 AM on September 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

English is technically my second language, so I had chronic reader's disease as a child (thanks for the term, adekllny!) Greek-derived words are a menace. Hilariously, they're also a menace in Polish, where they are (AFAIK) the only exception to the otherwise iron-clad "accent goes on the second-last syllable" rule.

I normally have a very good eye and memory for spelling, so misread words are much more of a record-scratch moment for me. The one that always comes to mind is "minuscule", which I was convinced well into my thirties had an i in the middle. Before that, the middle n in environment was quite a surprise to me, but that was a very long time ago.

I was recently thinking about dialects and accents, and how I subconsciously distinguish between "this person is pronouncing these words differently because they have a regional accent" (which has no effect on my own pronunciation) and "holy shit, I've been pronouncing this word wrong my whole life" (which requires an immediate database update). 99% of the time it seems obvious to me and I don't put a lot of thought into it, but I remember recently watching a restoration video, hearing the American youtuber pronounce "solder" as "sodder", and thinking "wait, what? No way!" (I had to look it up. It's a regional thing. All is well with the universe.)
posted by confluency at 1:15 PM on September 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

A semi-related tangent: words that you've known since before you could understand the meanings of word roots, whose etymology you suddenly realise as an adult. For me the most memorable example was Argentina. (Silver! They have silver mines!)
posted by confluency at 1:20 PM on September 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

Solder/sodder is just weird. (The UK goes with the former.)

I still pronounce tongue like tong when the rest of the world appears to pronounce it tung. And I've never worked out if I have an accent of one or if that's a regional thing. Only one person has ever called me on it.
posted by How much is that froggie in the window at 2:05 PM on September 7, 2023

For most of my life I thought it was Orangutang and was very confused the first time I heard Orangutan.

I LOVED hearing Maeve Higgen pronounce "tortoise" as "TOR toyse" on a Wait Wait Don't Tell Me segment

Every Brit I've heard say it pronounces it that way.

1993 film 'Six Degrees of Separation' dialogue mentions a possible class aspect to crisp enunciation.

"BOTToll of beer."
posted by dobbs at 3:14 PM on September 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

I am the child of a nurse, and an ex-party-drug user and this thread has blown my mind with Barbiturates. I have been spelling, and apparently pronouncing, this incorrectly my entire life.

I had more to add to this thread, but then I read Barbiturates and forgot them all.
posted by MuChao at 3:14 PM on September 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

This uk person says 'TORtus'. I think the 'toise' ending is also a standard, but not universal. (Also, tortoises are not a kind of turtle, whatever anyone says.)

Also: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/barbituate (and I would have not added the r in the spelling and I've never heard anyone pronounce it like it has one). I can find drug treatment centres by searching that spelling...
posted by How much is that froggie in the window at 4:30 PM on September 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

I've hit a few of the ones previously mentioned here, including MIGH-zuld. I shed most of them a while ago but one that lasted into adulthood was la-PIZ la-ZOO-lee. I also still remember a friend of mine literally laughing out loud when I said "swee generis".

I spent a large part of my life avoiding saying the word "trough" because I could never remember whether it was pronounced trow or troff (I have since come up with the mnemonic that it sounds like the Unix typesetting system).

As a kid I thought that the word that looks like "choir" and the word that sounds like "quire" were synonyms but not actually the same word.
posted by dfan at 5:34 PM on September 7, 2023

I remembered another one. I too have reader's disease (thanks, adekllny! That's the perfect phrase): roughage. In my head, this was "rooo-haaage" and the word "ruffage" (ruff-udj) was the word where you eat lots of fiber. Learned that one this year.
posted by Ms Vegetable at 6:54 AM on September 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

> For most of my life I thought it was Orangutang

That's still how I pronounce it, even though I know I am wrong. It sounds so weird the proper way.

> As a kid I thought that the word that looks like "choir" and the word that sounds like "quire" were synonyms but not actually the same word

Same, but "drawer" and "droor."
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:05 AM on September 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

> In my head, this was "rooo-haaage" and the word "ruffage" (ruff-udj) was the word where you eat lots of fiber. Learned that one this year. posted by Ms Vegetable

eponym-expert
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:06 AM on September 8, 2023 [3 favorites]

I still don't know whether to chomp or champ at a bit. I thought teetotaler was TEE-total-er, because reading. I still think it's VEE-eh-ment for vehement and VEE-eh-ment-ly, but I hear VEH-men-ent-ly all the time, and I'm not sure about that one.

My human thought "straphanger" was STRAFF-an-djer, which is still my favorite.
posted by lauranesson at 4:14 PM on September 8, 2023

Oh, and when I was in middle school, the eighth-graders were the oldest at the school and they mostly took classes in the Eighth-Grade Annex, which I thought until about seventh grade was the Eighth-Grade Antics.
posted by lauranesson at 4:15 PM on September 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

I still think it's VEE-eh-ment for vehement

You are correct.
posted by dfan at 5:44 PM on September 8, 2023

Epiphone

That’s right, so the play on words should be that it’s pronounced Epiphany! It’s also possible that “Epiphone” was the reason for my pronunciation confusion in the first place.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 8:18 PM on September 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

Also, as for “bi-opic”…isn’t it pronounced like that? I guess bio-pic makes a lot more sense, but no one says “thermo-meter”, so that seems fine to me either way.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 8:20 PM on September 9, 2023

Also, as for “bi-opic”…isn’t it pronounced like that? I guess bio-pic makes a lot more sense, but no one says “thermo-meter”, so that seems fine to me either way.

I think it's more about how the "o" in that word is pronounced; phonetically it's the difference between "bioh-pick" and "bi-ahpick".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:18 AM on September 10, 2023

Someone on TV just said ribald and pronounced it 'rih-bald' and not 'rye-bald', so I guess we can add that one to my list.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:03 PM on September 10, 2023

Somehow I just learned, in my early 50s!, that ebullient is NOT pronounced "EHB-you-lent"
posted by tristeza at 2:17 PM on September 26, 2023