Category: Pronunciation

Q: Let’s talk about pronunciation: ga-ZEE-bo or GAZE-bo, what do you think? Anxious to hear your thoughts on this.

A: The verb “gaze” may have something to do with the origin of “gazebo,” but not with its pronunciation. The word “gazebo” has three syllables, not two.

It can be pronounced as ga-ZEE-bo or ga-ZAY-bo, according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.).

The Oxford English Dictionary, however, gives only one pronunciation: ga-ZEE-bo.

The OED’s earliest citation for the word is from a 1752 publication about the design of Chinese bridges, temples, arches, and so on. One example was described as “The Elevation of a Chinese Tower or Gazebo.”

But an enterprising word sleuth, Stephen Goranson, recently discovered an earlier citation, from 1741.

Writing on the American Dialect Society’s Linguist List, Goranson said he found the word in a poem by Wetenhall Wilkes. We’ll give an excerpt:

“Unto the painful summit of this height / A gay Gazebo does our Steps invite. / From this, when favour’d with a Cloudless Day, / We fourteen Counties all around survey. / Th’ increasing prospect tires the wandring Eyes: / Hills peep o’er Hills, and mix with distant Skies.”

In modern usage, a gazebo is a freestanding, roofed structure that’s generally open on the sides, similar to a summerhouse or belvedere.

But in the 18th and 19th centuries, a gazebo could also be a part of a house, like a projecting window or balcony, or a roof turret affording distant views.

Where did the word come from? One common theory is that “gazebo” is a quasi-Latin coinage. As the OED says, it’s “commonly explained as a humorous formation” on the verb “gaze.”

According to this theory, “gazebo” would be translated as “I shall gaze,” mimicking first-person future-tense Latin verbs ending in –bo, like videbo (“I shall see”), lavabo (“I shall wash”), placebo (“I shall please”), and so on.

But there’s another theory about the origin of “gazebo,” and that “Chinese Tower” mentioned above is a clue. Some of the early quotations, according to the OED, “suggest that it may possibly be a corruption of some oriental word.”

Ultimately, however, the true origin remains a mystery.

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Q: Why is there such a proliferation of “prepatory” schools these days? I thought the word was “preparatory.” I’ve even heard a spot on WNYC that uses “prepatory.” If my sons were still of school age, I certainly would not send them to that prep school!

A: We can’t tell you why this is showing up, only that it’s considered a mispronunciation and not yet listed as standard (or as any kind of variant) in any dictionary we can find.

What’s being dropped in this pronunciation is not just the second “r” but the entire second syllable. The five-syllable “preparatory” becomes the four-syllable PREP-a-tor-ee.

Standard American dictionaries include several five-syllable pronunciations. They can be stressed on either the first syllable (PREP-er-a-tor-ee) or the second (pre-PAR-a-tor-ee).

One of the references we checked, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.), does accept a four-syllable pronunciation in which the first “r” is retained: PREP-ra-tor-ee.

By the way, the British pronounce the word as four syllables with the stress on the second syllable (pri-PAIR-a-tree), according to the Cambridge Dictionaries Online.

The adjective “preparatory,” meaning preliminary or introductory, entered English in the early 1400s, according to the Chambers Dictionary of Etymology. It was borrowed from Middle French, but its ultimate source was the Latin verb praeparare (to prepare).

The term “preparatory school” first showed up in the mid-1600s and the short form, “prep school,” in the late 1800s, according to published references in the Oxford English Dictionary.

The OED’s earliest citation for “prep school” is from an 1891 issue of the Cosmos, the student newspaper at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa:

“A prep school girl being told by her teacher to parse the sentence, ‘He kissed me,’ consented reluctantly.”

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Q: I have taught languages for almost 40 years and I am befuddled by two usages that seem to be accepted today in American English: (1) The pronunciation of words like “interstate” and “antiterrorist” as “innerstate” and “anniterrorist.” (2) The pronunciation of “fifth” as “fith.” Should I not instruct students in correct usage anymore regarding these examples? Please enlighten me.

A: The short answer is that most dictionaries consider these consonant-dropping pronunciations nonstandard. In other words, mispronunciations. So you’re safe in holding your ground here.

As you note, such pronunciations aren’t unusual. Garner’s Modern American Usage (3rd. ed.) includes “fifth” and “interesting” in its list of frequently mispronounced words in American English. (They’re spoken as if they were spelled “fith” and “inneresting.”)

Common or not, all the dictionaries we’ve checked agree that the “t” is pronounced in words beginning with an “anti-” or “inter-“ prefix, as well as in “interesting.” (The “t” is often dropped here in unaccented syllables.)

But not all authorities agree about “fifth.” One source, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.), accepts the pronunciations FITH and FIFT.

In accepting this latter pronunciation, M-W has ancient history on its side. In Old English, “fifth” was pronounced and written differently, as fifta. Similarly, the word had no final “th” sound in the other old Germanic languages.

So where did the “th” sound come from? The Oxford English Dictionary has the answer: “The normal form fift still survives in dialects; the standard form, which first appears in the 14th cent., is due to the analogy of fourth.”

So if “fourth” were “fourt” instead, we’d probably still be saying “fift.”

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Q: Please explain to me why some people, generally older and perhaps Southern, pronounce the word “what” in such a way that it sounds as if it’s spelled “hwat.” I hope my cumbersome explanation conveys what I’m asking.

A: In modern American usage, “what” can be pronounced with either a simple “w” sound at the beginning, or with a breathier “hw” sound

In standard American dictionaries, like The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.), both of those pronunciations are acceptable.

This wasn’t always true. Formerly, the latter pronunciation—it sounds something like HWUT—was preferred. For example, our 1956 copy of Webster’s New International Dictionary (the unabridged second edition), gives that as the only pronunciation.

But today, while both pronunciations are acceptable, the “hw” sound is losing ground. Most Americans have dropped the “h” sound at the beginning of “what” and other such words (“which,” “why,” “when,” “whim,” “white,” and so on).

These days, as you suggested, the “hw” sound is more likely to be heard in parts of the South than elsewhere in the country.

This trend away from the “hw” sound isn’t restricted to American English. Modern British usage favors an “h”-less pronunciation of “what” that sounds something like WOT.

The online Macmillan Dictionary, which has both British and American versions, gives both “w” and “hw” pronunciations for American usage but only one, the “h”-less version, for British usage. The Cambridge Dictionaries Online, which also has US and UK pronunciations, agrees.

As you might suspect, the “hw” pronunciation is the much older one. In fact, when “what” first showed up in Old English in the 700s, the word was spelled with an “h” in front: hwaet or huaet.

The British began losing the “h” sound in “what” long before Americans did, and even before the Colonies existed.

We found an interesting perspective on all this in Kate Burridge’s book Weeds in the Garden of Words (2005).

Burridge, an Australian linguist, writes, “Over the years English has been simplifying the clusters of consonants it allows, in particular the clusters that occur at the beginning of syllables.”

“We know that the change in pronunciation from ‘hw’ to ‘w’ started in the south of England as early as the Middle Ages, but it couldn’t have been a big hit, since the ‘hw’ cluster went across to North America in the 17th century,” she goes on to say.

In 18th-century England, Burridge adds, “the pronunciation ‘w’ was clearly gaining ground. It had even begun to creep into the speech of the educated, who had earlier condemned it.”

“By 1800 which and witch and whether and weather had become homophones in Standard English pronunciation,” she writes. “The cluster is managing to hang in there in places like Scotland and Ireland, but everywhere else it’s well and truly on the way out.”

Update: A reader of the blog calls our attention to an episode of the animated TV show “Family Guy” in which Stewie, the precocious infant, asks for “Cool Hwip topping.”

Q: How should an English speaker pronounce “double entendre”? Like French? Or like English? Or whatever?

A: Let’s begin with a little history.

English adopted “double entendre” in the 17th century from a now-obsolete French phrase that meant double understanding or ambiguity. But English speakers gave the expression a new, suggestive twist.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the phrase this way: “A double meaning; a word or phrase having a double sense, esp. as used to convey an indelicate meaning.”

The earliest citation in the OED is from John Dryden’s 1673 comedy Marriage a-la-Mode: “Chagrin, Grimace, Embarrasse, Double entendre, Equivoque.”

And here’s a 1694 example from Dryden’s play Love Triumphant: “No double Entendrès, which you Sparks allow; / To make the Ladies look they know not how.”

Interestingly, there’s no exact equivalent in modern French to our expression “double entendre.” Two near misses, double entente and double sens, don’t have the suggestiveness of the English version.

So how should an English speaker pronounce our illegitimate offspring? Illegitimately, of course.

Dictionaries are all over the place on this, but we treat “double” as an English word (DUB-ul) and “entendre” as if it’s French (ahn-TAN-dr).

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Q: I’m still getting over learning that I mispronounced “chimera” for over 60 years. I’d been saying SHIM-era. Who knew? Anyway, I was wondering about the relationship between “spatter” and “splatter”?

A: This will give us a chance to discuss one of our favorite words, “spatula.” (We know you’re eager, but you’ll just have to wait a bit.)

The word “splatter” means splash or spatter. It’s described by the Oxford English Dictionary as chiefly dialectal, and used mostly in the US.

The verb “splatter” dates from the late 18th century and the noun from the 19th. As for its source, the OED says it’s “imitative” in origin, meaning that its sound is an echo of what the word symbolizes.

The Chambers Dictionary of Etymology has another suggestion—that “splatter” is “perhaps a blend of spatter and splash,” which seems logical

Now, on to “spatter, which is much older than “splatter” and has Germanic origins. In Dutch and Low German, for example, spatten means to burst or spout, the OED says.

When the verb “spatter” was first recorded in English, in the late 1500s, it meant “to scatter or disperse in fragments,” says Oxford.

Early in the following century, it acquired the meanings familiar today—to splash or fall on something in scattered drops or particles.

The noun “spatter,” meaning a small splash or sprinkle, came along in the late 1700s.

You ask whether there’s a relationship between “spatter” and “splatter.” It’s possible. As we mentioned, Chambers speculates that “splatter” might be a blend of “spatter” and “splash,” but there’s a more solidly documented link.

In the late 1600s, men wore cloth or leather leggings to protect their trousers from spatters, especially while riding horseback. These were called, appropriately, “spatterdashes.” (Yes, this is the granddaddy of the later abbreviation “spats.”)

The old “spatterdashes” had several variants, including “splatterdashes” (18th century) and “spatter-plashes” (17th century).

What’s a “plash”? The noun “plash,” meaning something like a shallow pool or puddle, dates back to Old English and was altered in the 17th century to become “splash.”

OK, we’re now ready to discuss “spatula,” which we like simply for its combination of sounds.

It comes from Latin, in which spatula (or spathula) means a broad piece, but its ultimate source is the Greek spathe (a broad blade).

If you go back far enough, however, the words “spatula,” “spade,” and “spoon” share a prehistoric ancestor, according to John Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins.

In English, “spatula” has always meant a long, flat implement for mixing or spreading.

It entered the language in the 15th century but it has had some variant forms over the centuries. These include “spattle,” “spartle,” and (as you’ve probably guessed) “spatter” and “splatter.”

Books on etymology make very entertaining reading!

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Q: I heard an interview with the historian Louis Henry Gates Jr. the other day and I swear he pronounced the first syllable of “chimera” like the beginning of “chicken.” Is it just me, or what? I must break off now and return to my chi-square calculations.

A: The word “chimera” begins with a “k” sound, as in words like “character,” “chasm,” and “Christian.” The accent is on the second syllable: ki-MIR-uh.

This is the only pronunciation given in standard dictionaries, as well as the Oxford English Dictionary.

The chimera, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, was “a fabled fire-breathing monster of Greek mythology, with a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail (or according to others with the heads of a lion, a goat, and a serpent).”

The word in Greek means “she-goat,” and the fact that it comes from Greek accounts for its pronunciation.

In Greek writing, the word begins with X (the letter chi), which is pronounced like “k.” In English words that come from Greek, the “ch” letter combination is usually pronounced like “k.”

This is why the words “Christ” and “Christmas,” for example, begin with a “k” sound (for the Greek X).

In translating manuscripts from Greek, medieval scribes often substituted “X” for “Christ” in words like “Christmas” (“Xmas”) and “Christian” (“Xian”), as we wrote in a posting a few years back.

The word “chimera” was first recorded in English (spelled “chymere”) in the Wycliffe Bible of 1382. Back then, it meant the monstrous creature of mythology.

Later, it was used more loosely to mean any grotesque monster or phantasm.

And in the 16th century, the OED says, “chimera” acquired its modern meaning:

“An unreal creature of the imagination, a mere wild fancy; an unfounded conception.”

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Q: During a recent appearance on WNYC, Pat committed one of her rare missteps: she pronounced the first syllable of “schadenfreude” as SHAY rather than SHAH.

A: Right you are. Pat did indeed misspeak on the air. The tongue and mind sometimes go their separate ways during a live radio broadcast.

We’ve written before on our blog about “schadenfreude.” The first syllable, as you point out, is pronounced like the “a” in “father.”

This is the only pronunciation given in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.), Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.), and the Oxford English Dictionary.

The word is a compound, from the German schaden (adversity) and freude (joy). The OED defines it as “malicious enjoyment of the misfortunes of others.”

The OED’s earliest citation for the word in English is from On the Study of Words (1852), a collection of lectures by the philologist and Anglican clergyman Richard Chevenix Trench.

In the lectures, Trench points out a similar word in classical Greek: epikhairekakia. Aristotle uses the term in the Nicomachean Ethics to describe someone who takes pleasure in another’s ill fortune.

In discussing “schadenfreude,” Trench sounds more like a clergyman than a philologist:

“What a fearful thing is it that any language should have a word expressive of the pleasure which men feel at the calamities of others; for the existence of the word bears testimony to the existence of the thing.”

In our earlier posting about “schadenfreude,” we mentioned some of the more waggish takeoffs on the word.

An example is “blondenfreude,” for the glee we feel when a rich, powerful blonde gets her comeuppance.

We’d like to think that if Beethoven came back from the dead, he would compose an “Ode to Schadenfreude.”

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Q: Your posting on pronouncing “news” as NYOOZE reminded me of my undergraduate music studies. As a voice student, I had to take a one-semester course in diction, where we learned that NYOOZE was the correct pronunciation. In fact, we learned that whenever a long “u” sound follows any of the consonants in the phrase “Daniel Sitteth,” it should be pronounced with a “y” sound. So words like “lute” and “tune” should be pronounced LYOOT and TYOON. This comes from  Madeleine Marshall’s book on diction for singers.

A: Thanks for the interesting footnote. We weren’t familiar with Marshall’s book, The Singer’s Manual of English Diction, which was first published in 1953. It’s still in print and widely used.

When she died in 1993, at the age of 93, her obituary in the New York Times described the work as “a standard guide on the subject.”

We found an online overview of the book that has this advice for choral singers (the “j” in the pronunciation key is a “y” sound):

“Syllables spelled with u or ew, where the u or ew comes after the consonants d, n, l, s, t, or th (mnemonic device: ‘Daniel Sitteth’) are pronounced [ju], e.g., duty, due, dew, during, new, knew, lute, prelude, suit, assume, tune, stupid, student, enthuse. (See Chapter 36 for these rules and further examples).”

Madeleine Marshall Simon, who was known professionally as Madeleine Marshall, was a singing coach and concert pianist. She taught diction to singers at Juilliard for more than half a century, from 1935 to 1986.

Her pupils, according to her obituary, included Lily Pons, Leontyne Price, and Lauritz Melchior. Her husband was Robert A. Simon, a writer, a librettist, and a longtime music critic for The New Yorker. He died in 1981.

Of course, there’s singing pronunciation and there’s spoken pronunciation.

We’re pretty sure that Marshall would not have advised students of speaking elocution to pronounce “lute” as LYOOT or “tune” as TYOON. But clarity and uniformity of pronunciation are especially important in vocal music.

In discussing the value of clarity, Marshall laments the singer who sounds “as if he had a hot potato in his mouth …. as if he had a mouthful of mush … as if his mouth were full of marbles.”

“One of the purposes of this manual,” she writes, “is to help singers remove the potatoes, mush, and marbles from their songs in English. … It’s a book about singing in English and isn’t tended as a guide to anything else.”

Her pronunciation manual, she says, also aims at uniformity. In performance, each word must be pronounced exactly the same way by every singer.

If different characters in an opera, for instance, say the same word differently, she writes, “This disparity in pronunciation is disconcerting to an audience.”

But she stresses that she’s not concerned with ordinary spoken English: “The recommendation of this English for singing is, of course, no criticism of the English spoken in any given area.”

“Your personal speech,” she says, “is your own prerogative.”

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Q: One of the sisters in my old Catholic school used to rap our knuckles (literally) for pronouncing “schism” as SKIZ-em. She insisted it was SIZ-em. This was back in the ’50s and I still pronounce it SIZ-em. However, nobody else does. Where did SKIZ-em come from?

A: An old radio hand once scolded Pat for pronouncing the ch in “schism” as if it were a k. This prompted us to discuss “schism” in Origins of the Specious, our book about English myths and misconceptions.

When “schism” came into English in the 14th century, we wrote, it was spelled “scisme” and was pronounced SIZ- em.

The word apparently first showed up in print in the Wycliffe version of the Bible in 1382, and it originally referred to divisions in the Church.

We got the spelling “scisme” from Old French, but the ultimate source is schisma, Latin and Greek for “split” or “division.” (The Latin ch and the Greek letter chi are pronounced like k.)

Latin scholars got into the act in the 16th century, when they decided to stick an h in the middle of “scisme” to reflect its classical roots.

Despite the new spelling, the pronunciation remained SIZ- em for another couple of hundred years—until it began to annoy an 18th-century lexicographer named John Walker.

In his influential and widely popular Critical Pronouncing Dictionary (1791), Walker wrote that in Greek-derived words, ch should be pronounced as k, so SKIZ- em “is the only true and analogical pronunciation.”

His opinion probably seemed reasonable to many people because ch was pronounced as k in two similarly spelled words of classical origin, “school” and “scheme.”

For the next 150 years or so, Walker’s new pronunciation was more popular with the people speaking the language than with those writing the dictionaries and usage guides.

The experts (like that sister at your parochial school) insisted SKIZ- em was an error until the 1960s, when the pronunciation started gaining a foothold in American dictionaries.

Today SKIZ-em appears to be the more popular choice. In fact, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.) says in a usage note that the pronunciation “was long regarded as incorrect, but it has become so common in both British and American English that it gained acceptability and now predominates in standard American usage.”

Oxford Dictionaries online lists it as the only pronunciation. The other five standard dictionaries we checked include both pronunciations as standard, but three of them use only SKIZ-em for their online pronouncers.

One of the exceptions, the online Macmillan Dictionary, has pronouncers for both. Only Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) has SIZ-em as its sole online pronouncer.

Merriam-Webster’s also includes a more distant third pronunciation: SHIZ-em. Lord knows what Sister would have done if she’d heard that!

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