English mispronunciations that became common usage

boing
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The Wiki entry on Duct Tape is quite comprehensive on the naming history of duck/duct tape. :slight_smile:

Edit: tl;dr version - it was originally called “duck tape”, then in the 50’s people started using it to wrap ducts, and it started being called “duct tape”, and then heat and cold resistant versions started being manufactured to make them better to use for ducts specifically (because plain ol’ grey duct tape ain’t that great for ducts, it turns out). The brand name “Duck Tape” was trademarked in the 70’s, as the original name had fallen out of use.

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Personally, I use nuke-yuh-ler when I’m talking about microwaving food (also in usage is nuke-yuh-late). Really, it’s just a jokey affectation, but the joking did help me to tamp down my severe annoyance at hearing it pronounced that way. During the period of time when a certain president was repeating it all over television, I became quite angry and irrational in my reactions. Of course, there might have been more to it than pronunciation, and the tamping down had more to do with respect for the person I live with than with the person on tv.

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QUIXOTIC, adj. Absurdly chivalric, like Don Quixote. An insight into the
beauty and excellence of this incomparable adjective is unhappily
denied to him who has the misfortune to know that the gentleman’s name
is pronounced Ke-ho-tay.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

In other words, “kwik-SOH-tik” certainly seems (to some) to capture the feel of the word better.

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84

I’ve always pronounced it Schopenhauer

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Could you not just, like, show her a picture of some of the fishes? What the fuck else was she gonna call 'em?

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its existence.

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87

OK, with “Their” and “There”. Both rhyme with “air”. But I’d argue “they’re” is properly pronounced “thayer”.

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What’s wrong with literacy privilege?

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Well, you can just get right outta here with your weird pronunciation of “they’re” then. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Then there’s Illionis, where Cairo is “CARE-o”, Athens is “EIGHTH-ens”, Milan is “MY-lun” and Vienna is “Vai-EN-na”.

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And I will never understand why Natchitoches, LA is pronounced “NA-ka-desh”, but it is.

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Oh yes? And how do you tell them to pronounce Champoeg?
A native Oregonian myself, I love to hear travelers stumble over Siskiyou, Umpqua, and Willamette. (Never thought I’d stop laughing over " will - uh - METTY " )

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94

And remember that the Spanish word is an adaptation of the Nahuatl word.

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Where I’m from:
pruh - NUNCE - ee - YAY - shun

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My take: The thing at the center of an atom is a nucleus, and not a nuculus, and so that’s pretty much the start and end of it for me. And yes, that certain president’s pronunciation was a factor.

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Same here, as does the use of literally to mean figuratively. Flammable/inflammable, sanctioned/sanctioned, WTF, people. It’s almost like language grew organically, evolving, rather than being designed for logical consistency.

And walla, with emphasis on the second syllable. Say it out loud.

Yeah but if you do it that way then you can’t go from Don Quixote to Donkey Hotey.

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But do all y’all say it that way?

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This brings to mind my favourite running gag in Archer - the literally/figuratively bit they do. It is so damn awesome. I couldn’t find any good examples of it online, but there’s some discussion of it on this blog post which was discussing Google’s adding of “figuratively” as a proper definition of “literally”.

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When I first heard the classic Caesarism, “The die is cast”, meaning we are embarked on a series of events from which there is no return, I was in engineering. Naturally I thought ‘die’ as in a thing in which to form metal, not ‘die’ as in singular of dice. Two terms that, although completely different, ended up in the same place through roundabout methods.

Oh yeah, and if you are in Hawaii, it’s ‘Ai-nah Hai-nah’, NOT ‘Ay-eena Hay-eena’. The latter may get you laughed at, or hit.

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