Q: We grew up pronouncing “satiety” as SAY-she-uh-tee, which is very close to the French it comes from. The influence of Spanish is forcing the pronunciation to suh-TIE-uh-tee. I like the way we learned it as children.
A: We haven’t seen any evidence that Spanish is responsible for the usual modern pronunciation of “satiety” (suh-TIE-uh-tee) or that French inspired the less common pronunciation (SAY-she-uh-tee). In fact, the Spanish version of the word (saciedad) doesn’t have a “t” sound, and the French version (satiété) doesn’t have an “sh” sound.
English has had quite a few different spellings and pronunciations of “satiety” (the state of being filled with food, drink, etc.) since it adopted the word from Latin and Middle French in the 16th century. In fact, the Latin and Middle French versions of the term were also spelled and pronounced in different ways.
In classical Latin, the term was satietas (sufficiency, abundance), but in post-classical Latin it was sacietas as well as satietas, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. In Middle French, it was satieté and sacieté. And in Anglo-Norman, which greatly influenced Middle English, it was sacieté and sazietet. The “c” in these terms was pronounced like “s” before the vowel “i.”
When “satiety” showed up in the early modern English writing in the 1500s, the second syllable could begin with either a “t” or a “c.” Here are some of the 16th-century spellings cited in the OED: “saciete,” “sacietee,” “sacietye,” “satietie,” and “satiety.” Before spelling was formalized in modern English, words tended to be spelled as they were pronounced.
Skipping ahead a few centuries, “satiety” was usually pronounced suh-SIGH-uh-tee in the late 18th century, according to the lexicographer John Walker, who nevertheless thought it should be pronounced suh-TIE-uh-tee.
In A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language (1791), Walker says “the second syllable has been grossly mistaken by the generality of speakers” and pronounced like “the first of si-lence, as if written sa-si-e-ty.” So ”satiety” sounded at the time much like “society.”
The pronunciation of “satiety,” according to Walker, was “almost universally confounded with an apparently similar, but really different, assemblage of accent, vowels, and consonants” in “satiate” (pronounced SAY-she-ate) and similar words.
In other words, Walker believed that the pronunciation of “satiate” was influencing that of “satiety.” And as we say in a 2010 post, we suspect that this influence inspired the SAY-she-uh-tee pronunciation of “satiety.”
In modern English, the OED notes, the letter “t” has an “sh” sound “in the combinations -tion, -tious, -tial, -tia, -tian, -tience, -tient, after a vowel or any consonant except s.” (The words “nation,” “militia,” and “patience” are good examples.) But “t” is not usually pronounced “sh” in the combination “-tie” (as in “satiety”).
Eight of the ten online standard dictionaries we regularly consult offer only one pronunciation for “satiety,” either suh-TIE-i-tee or suh-TIE-uh-tee. The remaining two, Merriam-Webster and Merriam-Webster Unabridged, add SAY-she-uh-tee as a “secondary variant” that “occurs appreciably less often.”
Our 1956 copy of Webster’s New International Dictionary (a predecessor of the online Merriam-Webster Unabridged), includes only one pronunciation, suh-TIE-eh-tee, which suggests that SAY-she-uh-tee showed up in the last six decades.
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