Archive through July 14, 2003
TV ClubHouse: Archives: How Do You Pronounce Various Words?:
Archive through July 14, 2003
Bookworm | Saturday, July 05, 2003 - 07:14 pm     We have a town here that pronounces its name Pee-ru as well. We also have a town that is spelled Nevada, but is pronounced with the accent on the second syllable which has a long 'a'. A couple of weeks ago I heard a local commercial for a chain store where the announcer (who must not have been local) pronounced Des Moines with an 's' sound at the end. I only heard it twice, either it was a short promotion or the commercial was pulled or replaced with one using the correct (non 's') pronunciation. |
Cathie | Saturday, July 05, 2003 - 07:43 pm     We vacationed in the Smoky Mountain area a few years ago, and combined the trip with some family genealogy sleuthing in Maryville, TN. We quickly learned that Maryville is pronounced Mur-vul, and nearby Knoxville is Nox-vul. |
Texannie | Saturday, July 05, 2003 - 08:37 pm     Cathie..you didnt' know that? LOL I have family in TN...in wud ville to be exact and Chat nuga! LOL Now of course, you have the moutain folk who draw things out..my cousins live "upppp on Signallllllll Mowntaainnnnn" |
Sia | Sunday, July 06, 2003 - 06:47 pm     Tagurit, I guess I always say "suit" when saying living room suite. I think of "Suite" (pronounced "sweet") as "a suite of rooms," like you get at a fancy/expensive hotel when you get a sitting room in addition to the bedroom. |
Hootyhoot | Monday, July 07, 2003 - 08:23 am     I had a funny conversation with a gang of friends yesterday about the word detumescence (the New Yorker said the Hulk movie is a story of detumescence ...) ... Some of us knew the word but none of us would have thought to use it in regards to The Hulk! I got out my 40-pound 1939 dictionary and we read up on tumescence, detumify, tumificient, etc. and from there we went on to learn that a tumfie is a stupid or awkward person. This great old dictionary has many many words that are used to insult people! I guess we should be thankful that most of them have passed out of common usage. But it's fun to find them ... when was the last time you heard anyone say fifish or skivie? |
Trishan | Tuesday, July 08, 2003 - 09:45 am     Hello, all. A former co-worker says "on pen" instead of open, "idear" instead of idea...whenever I heard her say "idear" I'd think to myself: I have no idear, dear. She's from Maine, by the way.  |
Twiggyish | Tuesday, July 08, 2003 - 01:08 pm     Hooty, (I was curious about it..LOL) According to www.dictionary.com (copy and pasted directly from there: de·tu·mes·cence ( P ) Pronunciation Key (dt-msns, -ty-) n. Reduction or lessening of a swelling, especially the restoration of a swollen organ or part to normal size. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [From Latin dtumscere, to subside : d-, de- + tumscere, to swell, inchoative of tumre; see teu- in Indo-European Roots.] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- detu·mescent adj. Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. [Buy it] detumescence \De`tu*mes"cence, n. [L. detumescere to cease swelling; de + tumescere, tumere, to swell.] Diminution of swelling; subsidence of anything swollen. [R.] --Cudworth. Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc. detumescence detumescence: in CancerWEB's On-line Medical Dictionary Source: On-line Medical Dictionary, © 1997-98 Academic Medical Publishing & CancerWEB |
Tabbyking | Tuesday, July 08, 2003 - 02:19 pm     i worked in the bronx years ago with an older italian woman who had been raised in brooklyn. one day she came flying out of the bathroom, screaming, "call de plumma. der's a toid in da terlit and it won't go down!" she got so mad at me, because at 20 years of age, all i did was fall on the floor, laughing hysterically. and poor lillian was just fanning herself and getting all riled up. it still makes me laugh out loud to recall her screeching 68-year-old voice demanding that i do something, because it was a 'turrble' thing that had happened, that toid in the terlit. i had heard before the joking 'toity-toid and toid streets', but never for real! at the time, i thought only archie bunker said 'terlit'. that lady was also funny, because we worked with an ambulance and oxygen service. most of the ambulance crew was made up of 20-something males. i was 20 and lillian was late 60's. she always wore pantsuits with the top unbuttoned almost to her belly button and her lacy bras showing. she wore high heels, she wore a ton of make-up and she wore purple tinted glasses. she thought she was real hot stuff. we worked in a warehouse for heaven's sake, among tall canisters of gasses and ambulance crews. i wore jeans and long sleeve shirts because it was winter so much of the time. well, lillian got jealous because i was younger, i guess. one warm spring day, i showed up in a shirt with short sleeves and all the guys came running up and they were all staring at my arms. i asked what was up?! and all the guys told me that lillian had told them i wore long sleeves to hide needle marks... "being from california, i had to be one of those people who have sex with strangers in hot tubs and do drugs...." i almost decked her ass! but she still made me laugh...like the time she walked downhill to jacobi hospital to give a presentation on home care oxygen equipment and showed up back at the warehouse half an hour later. she said, "it got so hot; i got almost all the way there and had to turn around and come back. can someone give me a ride?" hello, she had to walk uphill coming back and had done more than 3/4 of the trip going when she turned around to come back and get a ride! seems smarter to have finished the downhill, almost there, trip and then call for a ride after her presentation for a ride back to the warehouse. |
Cjr | Tuesday, July 08, 2003 - 02:36 pm     ROFL at Lillian stories! Keep em' coming Tabbyking! Please!!! |
Tabbyking | Sunday, July 13, 2003 - 11:05 pm     well, lillian had a guy. she was widowed and heartbroken, only we couldn't really tell, so she kept telling us, even though she had a honey. she was all over the young guys we worked with. her honey, stanley, who by all accounts (well, at least lillian's accounts) was a real stud, showed up one day at the job. he was about as tall as danny de vito and twice as old. lillian was about 5'8" in her 3-inch sling back heels. anyway, stanley leans over the drinking fountain to take a drink and his toupee slides to the side. i was embarrassed for him so i walked up and kind of nudged it back where it went, only it got caught on a wrist button on my long sleeve shirt (remember, i wore long sleeves to hide my needle marks) and stuck with me. he had little patches of glue on his head. he didn't realize his hair was missing and i was ready to freak because i felt like i had scalped someone. well, lillian came out of the 'terlit area' and started screaming. whether it was because she didn't know stanley had a toupee (and let's face it, a 2-year-old would have known because it looked like the carpet square we kept in the garage for our collie to have puppies on) and i'm flapping my arm behind my back and the toupee finally gets flung off right as the cop comes in his for daily pay-off envelope and he slips on the hair and goes down on his ass....and stanley still doesn't realize he's missing his tresses and lillian starts hitting the policeman and saying, 'you're sitting on stanley's hair!", but she is hitting him all dainty-like because she doesn't want to mess up her nails--which she had spent the last month or so of work hours painting--the only filing she did was also on her nails; well that, and reading seventeen magazine for fashion ideas pretty much took up her entire work day. i think we had to put more cash in the envelope after that, too. and i remember the first day i was working alone and a cop came in for a pay-off. i had never seen it in my small california town... anyway, everyone is at lunch and this cop comes in. and i ask if i can help him. and he just stands there. then he says, "i think it's in the top right hand drawer." and i started to say, "what's in the..." and then it totally hits me, this is just like a new york movie scene, only unlike a new york movie scene, some dumb 20-year-old california chick who sounded an awful lot like me blurts out, "you don't expect me to pay you, do you? get out!" and he started in with how some of the ambulances are maybe illegally parked and do we have all our permits in order...and i just opened the door and pushed him out. well, i guess he paid a visit to my boss when i was out, because a day or so later my boss took me aside and told me i was either brave or stupid and there was always an envelope in the top right hand drawer i was to hand over. then about two months later, i was having dinner with a girlfriend at a small italian restaurant. two cops came in and sat behind us. one of them starts getting really loud and making all kind of blonde comments. i was the only blonde in my entire neighborhood (and one old man made his daughter bring him to my apartment to show him, because he was 80 and had never seen a real blonde)... so i turn around to ask him to knock it off and it's the cop i pushed around. so he recognizes me (one of the pitfalls of being the only blonde for 12 square blocks!) and starts really getting rude. and my friend, who was a medical student, told him to knock it off or she'd report him. so then he tells me he is going to handcuff me and put me in his car and he will make up a charge, and who 'knows what might happen then?" we finally were able to get out of being hassled by the jerk, but about a month after that, i was walking down a fairly busy street and this car pulls up just behind me, driving along with me. 'hey, blondie', (gosh, why did i have to be the only blonde for 12 square blocks?!) and then really nasty comments. and i whirl around, saying, "i'm going to call the cops!" but it was the cops. my cop. i did not miss him at all when he got transferred, or murdered or whatever they do to cops when they want them moved out of a certain area! ah, the bronx--no thonx! |
Scorpiomoon | Monday, July 14, 2003 - 10:49 am     Oh man, Tabby! Your posts were freakin' hysterical! I can't stopped laughing! Thanks for sharing. ;) |
Ophiliasgrandma | Monday, July 14, 2003 - 11:46 am     FYI, the state in which I live is pronounced, Or-E-GUN, not Or-E-Gone. And definately not Or-Gun which is how a few imported newscasters insist on saying it. Boy, does that ever grate! |
Kaili | Monday, July 14, 2003 - 11:53 am     Hmmm...when we lived there when I was a kid it was Org-in. |
Scorpiomoon | Monday, July 14, 2003 - 11:56 am     Does anyone know how to pronouce the last name "Meyer"? Is it May-er or Mee-er or My-er? |
Kaili | Monday, July 14, 2003 - 11:57 am     They Meyer families/people I have known have been My-er. |
Eliz87 | Monday, July 14, 2003 - 12:05 pm     For "oregano," my mother-in-law says OR-UH-GONE-O (with the emphasis on GONE) instead of OR-AY-GUN-O. My grandmother, when there was an I at the end of a word (Hawaii, Cincinnati, etc.), always made an UH sound at the end...i.e. instead of HUH-WHY-EE it was HUH-WHY-UH. I, of course, pronounce all my words correctly as far as I'm concerned. ;-) |
Eliz87 | Monday, July 14, 2003 - 12:11 pm     Oh yes, and my mother, instead of saying "chest of drawers," said "chester drawers." I wanted to ask her who Chester was. She also said, "tenner shoes," rather than "tennis shoes." Instead of "verify" she said "bearify." My husband says, "Up air," instead of "Up there." And of course the famous "real-a-tor" rather than "realtor." And obviously "nuke-u-lar" instead of "nuclear." Good lord, I'm from Ohio (otherwise known as the capital of West Virginia in some circles)...I have a million of 'em. |
Tabbyking | Monday, July 14, 2003 - 12:25 pm     eliz, was your grandmother from missouruh? just wondering if that's why she would use the 'uh' where there is an 'i'. i still can't figure out why arkansas ends with 'saw' and not the 'zuss' of kansas!! |
Scorpiomoon | Monday, July 14, 2003 - 12:29 pm     Kaili: Thank you SO MUCH! I suck at last names and I needed to be accurate with this one. I owe you one. |
Tabbyking | Monday, July 14, 2003 - 12:33 pm     once, at thanksgiving, my mom said, 'i'll just serve the pumpkin pie, then', and my 4-year-old brother jumped up from the table and ran to the garage. my dad followed him out. turns out adam was counting our puppies, because he thought it was puppy pie. he is 42 years old and we still call it puppy pie. only now he loves it when my daughter makes him 'puppy cheesecake'. the last time he was able to be here for thanksgiving, he had his wife drive the first leg back to 29 palms. he was holding half of a puppy cheesecake and a plastic fork as they pulled out of the driveway, and he told us later he ate the entire thing the first hour out!! |
Kaili | Monday, July 14, 2003 - 12:34 pm     Scorpiomoon- Just think of Oscar Meyer Weiners |
Tabbyking | Monday, July 14, 2003 - 12:35 pm     i can't stand it when people say 'supposably'. i'll bet i know a dozen people who said that...i have a friend who says, "prolly" for probably, but she does it for fun. those who i know who say supposably think they are saying supposedly correctly. it is all i can do to not correct these adults!! but they'd prolly be mad! lol |
Tabbyking | Monday, July 14, 2003 - 12:37 pm     i thought it was oscar mayer weiners.... |
Kaili | Monday, July 14, 2003 - 12:54 pm     Hmmm....maybe it is. I don't eat them. But on the song don't they pronounce it Myer? Oh I wish I were an Oscar MY-ER weiner- that is what I always want to be-e-e. Cause if I were an Oscar MY-ER weiner, everyone would be in love with me-e-e!!!! |
Ginger1218 | Monday, July 14, 2003 - 01:18 pm     I work with a girl who says Studient instead of Student. It drives me nuts. My brother in law, says sireen instead of siren, and ambulance (as in lancing a boil) and he also says 7/24 instead of 24/7 LOL |
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