Tag: Pronunciation

Q: Why is “roman à clef” pronounced ro-MAN-a-CLAY while the “f” is sounded at the end of neuf, the French word for nine?

A: The letter “f” is usually pronounced at the end of French words (oeuf, for example), but clef (key) is an exception.

In French, a key can be either a clef or a clé. Both terms are pronounced clay and both can refer to either musical notation or door opening.

Our blog is about English, not French, and a more intriguing question for us is why English speakers pronounce the “f” in “bass clef” (the musical term), but not the one in “roman à clef” (a novel in which real people or events are disguised).

English borrowed both the musical and the literary terms from French, but many years apart. The musical “clef” showed up in the 1500s, while “roman à clef” didn’t appear in print until the 1800s.

The ultimate source of “clef,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is clavem, Latin for key.

The earliest published English example of “clef” (spelled “cliffe”) in the OED is from The Schoole of Abuse (1579), Stephen Gosson’s puritanical attack against the theater: “How many keyes, how many cliffes, howe many moodes.”

(The dictionary notes that Gosson used the term here in the musical sense: a character that indicates the pitch on a line of musical staff.)

The earliest spellings of “clef” in English (“cliefe,” “cliffe,” “cleiffe,” etc.) suggest that the “f” was pronounced at that time.

We’ve read that the “f” in “clef” was pronounced in Old French, where speakers sounded many final consonants that aren’t heard in Modern French. We wonder if the “f” may have been sounded in Middle French (or Anglo-Norman) when English borrowed the word.

The OED suggests that the expression roman à clef (literally, a novel with a key) may be of relatively recent vintage in French as well as in English.

It dates the appearance of roman à clef in French at “1863 or earlier,” but then cites a 1690 French phrase, la clef d’un roman, which refers to the key character or passage that explains a novel.

The OED’s first English citation for “roman à clef” is from an 1882 book about Dickens by Sir Adolphus William Ward: “That art of mystification which the authors of both English and French romans a clef have since practised with so much transient success.”

And here’s a more recent citation, from a May 5, 2003, issue of New York Magazine: “The young dirt-disher reads from her thinly veiled roman-à-clef, The Devil Wears Prada.”

Why don’t English speakers pronounce the “f” in “roman à clef”? Probably because the French didn’t pronounce it when the expression entered English in the 19th century.

Note: Our Paris correspondent points out that a theory published in 1935 suggests clé arose as a back formation from the plural clés, which itself arose because the f + s combination in clefs looked odd. He’s skeptical, though, because both plurals, clefs and clés, are popular today.

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Q: How did “peaked,” an adjective describing a high point, come to be an adjective describing a sickly person at a low point?

A: The sickly sense of the word “peaked” refers to the sharp, thin, pinched features (that is, the peak-like appearance) of someone who’s ill or poorly fed.

This sense of the word first showed up in print in the early 19th century, according to published references in the Oxford English Dictionary.

The earliest citation comes from an 1809 issue of the publication Transactions of the American Philosophical Society: “We say (in the United-States) of a person whose face is contracted by sickness, he looks peaked.”

The usage was preceded by several similar terms: “peakingly” (1611), “peaking” (1699), and “peakingness” (1727), but these are now considered either obsolete or regional.

However, the colloquial term “peaky” (1823) is still seen quite a bit, though “peakyish” (1853) shows up rarely these days.

“Peaked,” the adjective describing an actual peak, entered English in the mid-1300s. An etymology note in the OED says the adjective apparently comes from the noun “peak,” though the noun didn’t show up in print until the mid-1400s.

By the way, the sickly adjective is usually pronounced PEE-kid and the geographic one PEEKT, though some dictionaries give both pronunciations for both words.

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Q: “Formidable” used to be pronounced FOR-midable in the US, but I believe the
pronunciation was influenced after WWII by British speakers, who pronounced it for-MID-able. For some reason this latter pronunciation has taken hold in the US.

A: Let’s establish at the outset that in modern American usage “formidable” can be pronounced correctly with the accent on either the first or the second syllable (FOR-mid-able or for-MID-able).

Both Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) and The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.), among others, give the two pronunciations, in that order, as standard English.

We can’t find any evidence, though, that Americans acquired the for-MID-able pronunciation from the British, as you suggest. But the pronunciation does appear to be relatively new—both in the US and in Britain.

For one thing, older standard dictionaries in both countries—even those as recent as the mid-1980s—list only one pronunciation, FOR-mid-able.

And for another, usage guides didn’t begin noticing the word until the mid- to late-20th century, which suggests that its pronunciation wasn’t an issue before then.

Even now, the only pronunciation given in the Oxford English Dictionary is accented on the first syllable (FOR-mid-able). One would think that if for-MID-able were a well-established British pronunciation, and if in fact Americans had acquired it from the British, the OED would list it as a variant.

Yet another British reference book, the latest version of Fowler’s Modern English Usage (revised 3rd ed., 2004), has this to say:

“The standard pronunciation is with the main stress on the first syllable. Second-syllable stressing, though increasingly heard (a limited opinion poll by J. C. Wells, 1990, actually revealed a slight preference for for-MID-able), is not recommended.”

Later the editor of the new Fowler’s, R.W. Burchfield, includes “formidable” in a list of multi-syllable words with “unstable accents.”

Words in which the accent is moving from the first to the second syllable in British usage, he says, include “applicable,” “clematis,” “controversy,” “despicable,” “exquisite,” “formidable,” “harass,” “hospitable,” “integral,” “lamentable,” and others. (Obviously, some of these newer pronunciations have already established themselves in American usage.)

As far as we can tell, the for-MID-able pronunciation seems to be a mid-20th-century phenomenon. The first edition of Fowler’s (1926) doesn’t mention it, nor does our 1956 copy of Webster’s New International Dictionary (the unabridged second edition). But it does show up, among similar “unorthodox” pronunciations, in the second edition of Fowler’s (1965).

Despite that “unorthodox” label in the ’60s, several recent dictionaries, British as well as American, list both pronunciations as standard today. Macmillan, for example, publishes British and American editions, and both of them give the two pronunciations. When both are given, the one accented on the first syllable is invariably listed ahead of the other.

Clearly, however, this pronunciation is in flux. Cambridge Dictionaries Online gives for-MID-able as the standard British pronunciation and FOR-mid-able as the American.

As for why the for-MID-able pronunciation has taken hold, the original Fowler’s offers a clue. In a section about the “recessive accent,” Henry Fowler commented on “a repugnance to strings of obscure syllables.”

Some people’s tongues, Fowler explained, “cannot frame a rapid succession of light syllables hardly differing from each another.” In reaction, he said, they tend either to shift the stress to the second syllable or to drop a syllable.

Fowler used the example of “laboratory,” a five-syllable word (at least it was in his day). Its “orthodox” pronunciation, he said, is accented on the first syllable, but some people “find four successive unaccented syllables trying.”

So rather than accent the first syllable, he said, they accent the second (la-BOR-a-tor-ee) or drop the fourth (LAB-or-a-tree). And, as we know, some British speakers do both (la-BOR-a-tree).

Americans have no trouble accenting the first syllable, but they drop the second (LAB-ra-tor-ee), the usual pronunciation in the US. Fortunately, “lab” is standard English on both sides of the Atlantic.

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Q: I’m an accountant in the office of the NYC Comptroller. When I look up the word “comptroller” in my dictionary, it simply says, “Variant of controller.” Isn’t “comptroller” a word?

A: Yes, “comptroller” is a word, but most dictionaries list it as a variant of “controller,” an officer who audits accounts and oversees the finances of a corporation or government agency.

In fact, the word “comptroller” began life as an illegitimate spelling back in the 15th century. Like many misspellings, it entered English through the back door, with a little help from meddlesome scribes.

We discuss this in Origins of the Specious, our book about language myths and misconceptions.

The first English version of the word, borrowed in the 1200s from a French dialect, was “countreroullour,” someone who kept a counter-roll— a duplicate set of financial records against which the original figures were checked.

Over the next few centuries, we say in Origins, the word appeared in various forms, such as “conterroller,” “ counteroller,” “countrollour, “controwler,” and finally “controller.”

All those spellings had one thing in common: The first part of the word had something to do with a counter, or duplicate, set of records.

The beginning was derived from the Latin contra, meaning opposite or against, as in a copy that you check an original against.

In those days, however, scribes loved to tinker with English spellings at every opportunity, and the tinkerers often screwed up.

In this case, some misinformed scribblers thought the first part of the word had to do with counting rather than countering. So they decided to emphasize the numerical angle by beginning the word with “compt,” like the verb “count” in French (compter) or Latin (computare).

In 1486 a new spelling appeared: “comptroller.”

Some scholars believe the scribes were trying to Frenchify the word to make their bosses— the official auditors of the day— seem classier. Others think the intent was to make English more like Latin.

Either way, the scriveners were mistaken.

To this day, the word “comptroller” reeks of officialdom. Think Comptroller General, Comptroller of the Currency, Comptroller of the Lord Chamberlain’s Office. And, of course, Comptroller of the City of New York.

Although you can find “controllers” and “comptrollers” in both government and business, the more bureaucratic-sounding word seems at home in the public sphere.

Both words are legit. But if we had a choice, we’d go for “controller” (pronounced con-TRO-ler). Simpler is better.

If you work for a comptroller, though, you don’t have a choice. Or, rather, the only choice you have is how to pronounce your boss’s job.

COMP-tro-ler or comp-TRO-ler?

Either one is OK.

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Q: On one of Pat’s WNYC segments, she was asked about the pronunciation of “street” as SHTREET. She mentioned that you have a posting on the blog about this, but I wonder if the pronunciation may have been influenced by German.

A: You bring up a very interesting point.

In standard German, the letter combination “st” is pronounced SHT at the beginning of a syllable. You can hear this when a German speaker says a word like strahlen (to shine), or a compound like überstrahlen (to outshine).

The same thing is true, by the way, with the German “sp,” which sounds like SHP at the beginning of a syllable. You can hear this in words like sprechen (to speak) and besprechen (to discuss).

This shushing, as if an “h” had been inserted, wasn’t always part of standard German. It apparently developed as a regional pronunciation in Upper Saxony and spread to other German dialects several hundred years ago.

Like most language changes, this shift in pronunciation met resistance along the way. In fact, we found a 1935 article showing that the SHT and SHP pronunciations were being discouraged by German-language instructors as late as the mid-19th century.

The article, written by Charles T. Carr and published in the Modern Language Review, examined books on German intended for English audiences in the 18th and early 19th centuries.

Several of the grammar books and readers said that “st” and “sp” should be pronounced just as written, and warned against the Upper Saxon pronunciations SHT and SHP.

Yet for some reason the pronunciation not only thrived but is now standard German. Could this happen in English? Ours is a Germanic language, so this is certainly a legitimate question.

Already, as we said in our blog posting on the subject, many American speakers pronounce “st” as SHT and this is considered fairly common. Research has shown that this speech pattern is not regional but widely spread.

Nevertheless, we won’t go out on a limb and say this pronunciation is likely to become the standard, as it has in German. But we’ve observed a couple of interesting things about it.

First, for a lazy tongue it’s easier to say SHT than ST. That’s no doubt why people who’ve had a bit too much to drink tend to slur words like “street” as SHTREET and “spell” as SHPELL and “history” as HISH-try.

Second, one is apt to slur these words when speaking through clenched teeth, tough-guy style, as in gangster movies of the ’30s.

Did those Saxons of long ago speak with teeth clenched or jaws tensed, and is this how the pronunciation crept into German? Like you, no doubt, we’d love to know the answer!

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Q: A question came up on the Leonard Lopate Show about the pronunciation of “route.” Pat said either ROOT or ROWT is correct. I beg to disagree. I am English. And, as any Englishman will tell you, there is only one proper pronunciation: ROOT.

A: The word “route” can be pronounced either ROOT or ROWT in the US.

This is true for both the noun, meaning a course or path, or the verb, meaning to send something by a specific course or path.

In Britain, though, only the first pronunciation is common for the noun and verb. But the British once had both versions too.

As the Oxford English Dictionary explains, the second (ROWT) disappeared from standard British English sometime during the 19th century, “but is still widespread in North America.”

The noun “route” is very old, and was probably first recorded around 1225, the OED says.

It came into English by way of Anglo-Norman and Old French (rute or rote or route). But its ultimate source is the Latin rupta, which the OED says is short for the phrase via rupta (a broken way, or a road opened by force).

The Oxford editors, in commenting on the etymology of the word, also note that the Latin verb rumpere means to break, and rumpere viam means to open up a path.

Our word “routine” is a relative of “route.” And the English word “rut,” which originally meant the track left by a wheel, may have begun as a variant of “route,” according to etymologists.

The figurative sense of “rut,” meaning a narrow, dull, and habitual course or life or action, came along in the mid-19th century, the OED says.

The verb “route” is a relative newcomer, first showing up in the 1880s, according to published references in the dictionary.

The first citation in the OED is from an 1881 guide for stationmasters on the London & North Western Railway:

“To other passengers the old set of tickets, routed via Caledonian Railway, is to be issued.”

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Q: I live in acronym-crazy NYC (SoHo, Dumbo, TriBeCa, and so on). But what about abbreviations that are pronounced as letters, not words (NYC, for example). I’ve coined a word for them: “abbrevonym.” I look forward to your response.

A: We also like “abbrevonym,” a word that’s been suggested now and then by language types. But unfortunately, there’s already a word for this: “initialism.”

An initialism is an abbreviation that’s spoken as letters, like “FBI,” “PTA,” “NAACP,” and “NCAA.” Here’s a more detailed definition, courtesy of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.):

“An abbreviation consisting of the first letter or letters of words in a phrase (for example, IRS for Internal Revenue Service), syllables or components of a word (TNT for trinitrotoluene), or a combination of words and syllables (ESP for extrasensory perception) and pronounced by spelling out the letters one by one rather than as a solid word.”

An acronym, on the other hand, is usually defined as an abbreviation that’s spoken as a word, like “radar” ( for “radio detection and ranging”), “laser” (“light amplification by the stimulated emission of radiation”), and “NATO” (“North Atlantic Treaty Organization”).

We had a posting on the blog a couple of years ago about acronyms and initialisms

The New York neighborhoods you mention are indeed examples of acronyms, because they’re spoken as words.

The craze for geographical acronyms in the city began with SoHo (for “south of Houston”), moved on to TriBeCa (“triangle below Canal”), and now includes such whimsies as NoHo (“north of Houston”), Dumbo (“down under Manhattan Bridge overpass”), NoLIta (“north of Little Italy”), and even NoMad (“north of Madison Square Park”). Some have suggested that last one should instead be known as SoMa (“south of Macy’s”).

We’ve also written about the “h” in “SoHo”—that is, why “Houston” is pronounced HEW-ston in Texas but HOW-ston in New York.

As for what to call an abbreviation spoken in letters, frankly we prefer “abbrevonym” to the boring “initialism.” Who knows? It could catch on. Until then, though, we’ll stick with the old stick-in-the-mud.

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Q: I’m uncomfortable with the dictionary pronunciations of  “cation” and “anion” (with the accent on the second syllable). I inevitably accent the first syllable, but I find that somewhat choppy. Any ideas?

A: We doubt that many people are losing sleep over how to pronounce these specialized scientific words.

A “cation” (pronounced kat-EYE-un) is a positively charged ion; an “anion” (pronounced a-NYE-un) is a negatively charged ion.

In an electrolyzed solution, a “cation” migrates to the cathode and an “anion” migrates to the anode.

We don’t see much chance that their pronunciations will change. The words simply aren’t being bandied about enough in the general population.

So if you’re using them in scientific conversations and want to be taken seriously, we’d recommend going with the dictionary pronunciations.

If the pronunciations sound like Greek to you, it may be because both words come from the language of Homer, Socrates, and Aristophanes.

The Greek verb katienai means to go down and anienai means to go up. The Greek ion, meaning something that goes, is from ienai (to go).

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Q: Is “species” pronounced SPEE-shees or SPEE-sees? Or are they just regional variations?

A: Both pronunciations are correct in the US and both are given, without preference, in standard American dictionaries.

If you’re an American, whether you use SPEE-shees or SPEE-sees is more a matter of taste or preference than of regional variation.

However, SPEE-shees is preferred in British English.

This “sh” pronunciation is given in the Oxford English Dictionary and is preferred by Fowler’s Modern English Usage (revised 3rd ed.).

Fowler’s acknowledges the other pronunciation, but inserts the word “prissily” in front of it.

The online Macmillan Dictionary, which has both British and American versions, gives both pronunciations for American readers but only the “sh” version for British readers.

As far as we know, the “sh” version has always been standard English in Britain. The 1831 edition of Walker’s Pronouncing Dictionary, for example, has the following entry:

“Species, spi’shiz, s. A sort, a subdivision of a general term; class of nature, single order of beings; appearance to the senses; representation to the mind; circulating money; simples that have place in a compound.”

The word was borrowed from Latin, in which species means appearance, form, or kind. Its ultimate ancestor is the Latin verb specere (to look).

The Chambers Dictionary of Etymology says that when it first came into English in the late 1300s, “species” was a classification in logic and meant appearance.

In the 1500s it came to mean sort or kind, and in the early 1600s it was first used in the biological sense, to identify groups of plants and animals.

The final “s” doesn’t mean “species” is a plural, by the way; like “series,” it’s the same in singular and plural.

In fact, the word “specie” is often used mistakenly as a singular form of “species.”

Although the two words come from the same Latin source, “specie” usually refers to money in coins.

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Q: I’m puzzled by something. Why is “of” pronounced UV and not UF?

A: You raise a very interesting question.

First of all, the letter “v” wasn’t used in Old English writing. The letter “f” represented either an “f” or a “v” sound, depending on vocal stresses. 

This fact plays an important part in the history of the word “of.”

“Of” entered English from Germanic sources. It was derived from af  in languages like Old Saxon, Old Icelandic, and Gothic, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The word once had two forms—stressed and unstressed. In primitive Old English, it was spelled differently and pronounced differently depending on where it fell in a sentence.

The unstressed form (of) had a shorter pronunciation and the “f” was pronounced like “v.”

The stressed form (aef) was more drawn out, and the “f” was pronounced like “f.”

The vowel sounds were different, too. The unstressed form sounded more or less like UV and the stressed form like AHF.

The forms did not have different meanings, just different spellings and pronunciations. Soon the aef spelling disappeared, however, and for much of its history, until into the 1600s, this word was spelled “of” in both of its forms. 

Meanwhile, the spelling “off” developed for the stressed form, and eventually “off” became a separate word, with different functions to go along with its different sound.

The OED says “of” and “off” weren’t “fully differentiated” until the 17th century, and “thus of and off now rank as different words.”

One view of all this is that “of” and “off” were once the same word. Today it’s hard to imagine these two words as one with a single meaning, like the original of/aef.

In ancient times, the word’s primary sense was “away” or “away from.” But the original sense of “of” has become obscured over time. Even the OED admits that the history of its meanings is “exceedingly complicated.”

One things hasn’t changed much. Even now, we use different stresses in saying “of” and “off,” as in these underlined phrases: “The roof of the house blew off the house.”

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Q: The other day I heard a woman on WNYC pronounce “archipelago” as ARCH-uh-puh-LAH-go—the ARCH sounded like the architectural structure. Is there something I don’t know or should she modify her pronunciation?

A: As traditionally pronounced, the first four letters of “archipelago” end in a “k” sound (as in “architect”), not in a sibilant sound (as in “archbishop”).

This generally accepted pronunciation (ar-kuh-PEL-uh-go) is the only one given in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) and almost every other standard dictionary.

The Oxford English Dictionary also gives a “k” pronunciation.

Usage guides like Garner’s Modern American Usage (3rd ed.) and Fowler’s Modern English Usage (revised 3rd ed.) agree, insisting on the “k” pronunciation.

So the “authorities” are practically unanimous.

But a mistaken pronunciation of this word has apparently begun to influence some lexicographers. This isn’t unusual; in fact, it’s one way in which usage changes.

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) now lists a variant pronunciation in which the “ch” sounds as it does in “church.” Merriam-Webster’s also included this variant in its previous edition, the 10th, published in 2001.

As far as we can tell, Merriam-Webster’s is the only standard dictionary that includes this pronunciation. And until it becomes more widely accepted, we can’t recommend using it.

How did the mispronunciation creep in? Probably because of confusion between the prefix “arch-” and the noun “arch,” or because of confusion among the different forms of the prefix.

In English, we have several forms of this prefix (“arch-” and “archi-” and “arche-”), all borrowed from Greek (arkh-, arkhi-, arkhe-) and meaning principal or leading or beginning.

In many cases, the prefix is pronounced with a hard “k” sound, as it would be in Greek: ARK, AR-kee, AR-kay, and so on.

The hard sound appears in words like “archeology” (beginning history), “archaic” (from the beginning), “architect” (chief builder), “archangel” (leading angel), “archetype” (beginning model), and “architrave” (the main beam that rests on a column).

In other cases, “arch-” has a soft “ch” sound, as in compounds like “archbishop,” “archduke,” and “archdiocese.”

This is the prefix that later became an adjective and now appears (sometimes hyphenated) in compounds like “archenemy,” “archconservative,” “archrival,” etc.

The only compound of this kind that doesn’t have a soft “ch” sound is “archangel.” Because of the following “a” in “angel,” the OED explains, “the prefix in this word remained hard (arc-, ark-) in all the Romance languages.”

The word “archipelago” belongs to the first category—words traditionally pronounced with a hard “k” sound. It has quite a history.

Today an “archipelago” is a group of islands or a body of water studded with islands. But when the Venetians coined the word arcipelago in the mid-13th century, it was a term for the Aegean Sea.

The Italians borrowed the Greek prefix arkhi to form the compound word, which literally means principal gulf or pool. To the Venetians, the Aegean was the queen of oceans.

John Ayto’s Dictionary of Word Origins has an interesting historical note about the word:

“The term ‘chief sea’ identified the Aegean, as contrasted with all the smaller lagoons, lakes, and inlets to which the word pélagos was also applied. An ‘Englished’ form of the word, Arch-sea, was in use in the 17th century, and in sailors’ jargon it was often abbreviated to Arches.”

Ayto gives this citation from the diplomat Sir Thomas Roe’s Negotiations (1626): “An island called Augustos near Paros, in the Arches.”

He goes on to say that because the Aegean has many islands, the word “archipelago” gradually came to mean “large group of islands.”

In Italian, words with the Greek arkhi or arkhe prefix are spelled with arci or arce, and the “c” is pronounced with a sibilant “ch” sound. So the “c” in the Italian arcipelago would be pronounced like the “ch” in the English word “church” 

When the word came into English, it was spelled “archpelago” or “archipelago,” and pronounced in the Greek manner with a “k” sound.

But there are a couple of “arches” we haven’t explained yet.

The adjective “arch” that’s used as a separate word—meaning crafty or waggish or saucy—developed in the 17th century, the OED says.

It got its meaning through association with such phrases as “arch-rogue” and “arch-knave,” even though the “arch” part originally meant “preeminent.”

And finally we come to the noun “arch,” meaning a curved structure.

It comes from the Latin arcus, meaning a curve or bow. This is the Latin ancestor of “archer” and “archery” (so named for the curve of the bow), as well as “arrow” (so named not because of the curve of its flight, but because it’s shot from a bow).

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