How do you pronounce poem?

July 24, 2018 2:33 PM

Poem - Verse, piece of poetry.

Is it pome? (rhymes with roam)
Is it po-em? (rhymes with show 'em)
Is it poim? (same vowel sound as coin)

This word really confuses me. It has for years. I have heard all three. Which is correct?

posted by narancia to Writing & Language (42 answers total)

po-em
posted by Nerd of the North at 2:34 PM on July 24, 2018

Po-em
MA-raised, 47-yo
posted by greermahoney at 2:40 PM on July 24, 2018

I've heard po-em and pome, and probably drift back and forth between them, like how fire can be one syllable or two. I've never heard poim.
posted by aubilenon at 2:41 PM on July 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

Pome, raised in WI. Also hard of hearing so that could be a factor.
posted by acidnova at 2:42 PM on July 24, 2018

40 year old & middle class from English Midlands (but no noticeable regional accent): Poe-'im.
posted by ambrosen at 2:43 PM on July 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

Also, there’s no such thing as “correct” regarding pronunciation. There’s only how your region pronounces it. There are more standard and less common pronunciations.
posted by greermahoney at 2:43 PM on July 24, 2018 [12 favorites]

Po-em. Georgia
posted by amtho at 2:43 PM on July 24, 2018

In Standard American English, po-em and pome are both acceptable (the descriptivists at Merriam-Webster offer a few more pronunciations).

Po-em is, in my experience, by far the most common pronunciation among US English speakers.
posted by box at 2:45 PM on July 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

My Texas poet friends say: Poym.
My east coast poet friends say: Po'um. (Not quite rhyming with roam. Tiny, tiny beat, though not a whole syllable, bw PO and UM.)
posted by nantucket at 2:48 PM on July 24, 2018 [4 favorites]

“Pome” is popular in the Interior West; I lean toward “po’ um,” but the “um” is short; it’s almost a syllable and a half, like “fire.” (Cohens out here are sometimes called Cones.)

As a kid I always liked how Kermit the Frog said “poym.” Would rhyme with “germ” in a CCR song.
posted by armeowda at 2:50 PM on July 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

This survey of US english speakers may interest you:

Does "poem" have one or two syllables?

Looks like a pretty even split between "pome" and "po-em" people, with no real regional breakdown.
posted by erst at 2:50 PM on July 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

Born in TX, spent 20 years in Atlanta -- I pronounce is like "pohm", some where between "pome" and "po-em".
posted by SoulOnIce at 2:52 PM on July 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

Po-um. Central/Western NYS.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 3:10 PM on July 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

Agreed that it's between the first two. More like po-uhm, but still one syllable.
posted by booooooze at 3:18 PM on July 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

In Scots, it's more like po-yim. I'm English and it's po-em for me. Also discussed on the website of MeFi's own languagehat.
posted by penguin pie at 3:20 PM on July 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

po-wum
posted by Rhaomi at 3:43 PM on July 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

Po-em. FL, GA, TX
posted by heathrowga at 3:51 PM on July 24, 2018

Po-ehm here. (Late 20s, originally from rural SE Virginia.)
posted by schroedingersgirl at 3:52 PM on July 24, 2018

US Midwesterner. Autocorrect isn’t letting me write what I say. It’s your second choice, though I say em rather than the um I’d use for show’em. That is similar to poet - I’ve never heard pote or poyt. When I hear the other two pronunciations, I assume the person is not well educated. I think there is more than regional difference at play here.

And while it’s technically true that there’s no such thing as an incorrect pronunciation, there are pronunciations that mark you as uneducated or lower class. You can say foilage and liberry if you want, but it’s going to affect how people see you whether you think it should or not. I would be very uncomfortable if my child’s teacher said pome.
posted by FencingGal at 4:05 PM on July 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

American Heritage only gives the second pronunciation as correct, as does my 1957 Webster’s unabridged. So it looks like an originally incorrect version is becoming more acceptable. Perhaps in 100 years, it won’t matter.
posted by FencingGal at 4:49 PM on July 24, 2018

I say pome when I’m at home
But po-em amongst the doyens
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:31 PM on July 24, 2018

po-em. Not sure I've ever really heard pome but have definitely heard poim. I associate the poim pronunciation with the same teachers who said hwich and hwat and mis-CHEE-vee-ous. 42, US, I've moved around.
posted by Hal Mumkin at 5:34 PM on July 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

And while it’s technically true that there’s no such thing as an incorrect pronunciation, there are pronunciations that mark you as uneducated or lower class. You can say foilage and liberry if you want, but it’s going to affect how people see you whether you think it should or not. I would be very uncomfortable if my child’s teacher said pome.

I mean, I went to an Ivy League school and have a master's degree, and I tend to say "pome" unless I'm tripping over my tongue because I think my listeners are being super-judgmental about my accent, so there's that. Lived all over the US enough that I've lost track of which bits of regional dialect I've picked up where.
posted by lazuli at 5:42 PM on July 24, 2018 [7 favorites]

Raised in Texas, and I think the way I naturally pronounce it is po-em, but hitting the second syllable so lightly that it gets awfully close to the pome pronunciation. But I could hear po-em, pome, or poim and not even notice. They're all acceptable variants to me.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 5:53 PM on July 24, 2018

Poom.
posted by ewok_academy at 6:20 PM on July 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

You can say foilage and liberry if you want, but it’s going to affect how people see you whether you think it should or not

Not the same thing. I think both "pome" and "po-em" are completely acceptable in American English. (I actually think most Americans say something closer to "po-um" than "po-em.")
posted by pinochiette at 7:19 PM on July 24, 2018

I don't call my shrubbery foilage, and I don't call the library a liberry, but I do say pome. Midwest born and raised.

Oh, and roof instead of rooooof.
posted by Armed Only With Hubris at 7:31 PM on July 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

I'm a teacher with a degree in English from one of the best colleges in the U.S., and I say "pome". Don't worry, your kids will be fine. I'm still good at my job.
posted by goodbyewaffles at 7:40 PM on July 24, 2018 [6 favorites]

PO-um (with the second syllable as a schwa “e”). Native Manhattanite.
posted by holborne at 7:43 PM on July 24, 2018

I’ve also heard it pronounced po-eem.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:18 PM on July 24, 2018

All this social-class discussion now has me wondering if Eric Cartman would call it a “perm.” Like, screw you guys, I want a perm.
posted by armeowda at 8:40 PM on July 24, 2018

pohm. close to pome but a little different.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:31 PM on July 24, 2018

American Californian here and I say “po-um” like some others above.
My Scottish husband says something like “po-yim” and I love it. (I also love how he pronounces “party” and “murder”.)
posted by like_neon at 11:21 PM on July 24, 2018

I just realized I pronounce it and think of my pronunciation as "polm." Like the word "palm" or calm" but "polm."

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
posted by AppleTurnover at 1:22 AM on July 25, 2018

Two syllables. Originally from rural southeastern VA, like schroedingersgirl. Note: in this region, "coin" is also two syllables like the name "Cohen".
posted by nangar at 3:51 AM on July 25, 2018

I say pome (late 30's, northeast US, working class childhood). The others sound a little try-hard to me but are not incorrect; I figure that people who pronounce "caramel" with two syllables think the same of me.
posted by tchemgrrl at 5:45 AM on July 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

Not the same thing. I think both "pome" and "po-em" are completely acceptable in American English.

It actually is the same thing. "Poem" is just further along in the process. As I stated above, it was clearly "wrong" in 1957 and is still wrong according to American Heritage, which is a perfectly acceptable dictionary. So it's another pronunciation that has gradually become correct (kind of - dictionaries aren't agreeing) through lots of people saying the word incorrectly. That happens, and there's nothing wrong with it. But it's still going to sound wrong to a lot of people, who won't check at all or might check American Heritage. So using it is risky because of the way it might flag the user. (The people I know that I've checked with are stunned that M-W says it's acceptable.) No doubt it sounds to me like liberry and foilage sound to you. Fifty years from now, there's a good chance Merriam-Webster might accept both of those.
posted by FencingGal at 7:41 AM on July 25, 2018

POE-um. Similarly, POE-a-tree.
posted by emelenjr at 8:33 AM on July 25, 2018

Raised in Ohio: If I'm sounding out in my head, it's po-uhm, two separate syllables. If I'm saying it out loud, those two separate syllables are very likely to run together into one depending on how quickly I'm talking and whether I'm attempting to enunciate.

I don't do it but I feel similarly about "liberry" at least, that many of the people who say it aren't really mistaking how the word is spelled, it's just that if you cut short the space between the "b" and the "a" that "r" has a habit of vanishing. The shortest distance between the "o" and the "m" in "poem" is not compatible with an "eh". I think the "uh" is the middle ground, second syllable still there but not quite as distinct.
posted by Sequence at 9:42 AM on July 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

I just assumed I say po-em but now I think it's very, very nearly pome - South Western Ontario
posted by bonobothegreat at 7:03 PM on July 25, 2018

Huh. In thinking about it, my pronunciation of poem sounds very close to the way bobobothegreat describes it. Not "poke" with an m, but just the slightest upwards inflection at the end of the word. Not sure if any listener would ever hear it because unless I'm completely at ease or actively working against it, I tend to have bad diction. The diction is more of an active concern to me in how others perceive me, though, than if they are scouring my language for regional aberrations. I'd never get another word out of my mouth if I let myself worry about that, because there are a lot more words than "poem" that mark people as this or that.
posted by Armed Only With Hubris at 8:30 AM on July 26, 2018

English, middle class, from Essex. I say POE-im.
posted by fabius at 12:49 PM on July 27, 2018