There are a ton of words in the English language that we learn first by reading, and second by saying them out loud.
Last week, a Twitter user asked everyone to share their best examples of words they had been mispronouncing, and people's answers were pretty hilarious.
What word did you learn first by reading before you realized you were pronouncing it wrong the whole time?
Mine was "weapon," which I pronounced as "Weep-on." Thank you, Ms. Greene for not making a huge scene out of your correction.
1. Epitome: "Epi-tome."
Epitome but like it rhymes with home. https://t.co/pfvTdtwFZs
2. Vagina: "Va-(hard g)ee-nah."
@alau2 Um, vagina. 😳 “va-(hard g)ee-nah
3. Prima donnas: "Pre-madonnas."
@alau2 not exactly the same -- the reverse, in fact -- but I once got a note from a softball team my teenage daughter was playing on, in which the coach thanked the players for not being a bunch of pre-Madonnas.
4. Homeowner: "Ho-meow-ner."
@alau2 Homeowner (ho-meow-ner)
5. Banal: "Bay-nal."
@alau2 banal, and it was embarrassing
6. Faux: "Fawx."
@alau2 My brother calls them “read-it-never-said-its.” My “read-it-never-said-it” was faux—I thought “faw-x” until I was 18 and read aloud something /I wrote/ in a college classroom. 😳
7. Chick-fil-A: "Chick Filla."
@alau2 I had a friend that kept pronouncing Chick Fill-A like chick filla (short a). I never corrected him cuz I thought he was joking. I played along. Finally said it correctly. He was like - Wait, WHAT?!? He had no idea.
8. Fatigue: "Fatty-goo-wee."
@alau2 Fatigue (Fatty-goo-wee)
9. Hors d'oeuvres: "Horse doovers."
@shannonrwatts @alau2 In grade school I had to read the word ‘hors d’oeuvres’ aloud and pronounced it ‘horse doovers’
10. Debut: "Dee-Butt."
@alau2 Debut. I pronounced it as dee-butt.
11. Facade: "Fa-kade."
@alau2 Facade, as “fa-kade,” a thing I said routinely when I was like six.
12. Meme: "Me-me."
@alau2 Meme. Certain it was, “me me”. 🤦🏼♀️
13. Hermione: "Her-me-own."
@LibyaLiberty @alau2 Hermione. I read it as ‘Her - me - own’ until Goblet of Fire when Hermione teaches Viktor Krum to say her name!
14. GIF: "G(hard G)-iff."
@alau2 Gif.... I STILL don’t know how to pronounce it
Take this poll to see where you stand on GIF's pronunciation.
15. Deaf: "Deef."
@alau2 @kalesalad Deaf (pronounced as deef)
16. Touchè: “Touchy."
@alau2 I used to read “Touchè” as “Touchy” which made the Three Musketeers seem very sensitive and kind of bitchy.
17. Albeit: "All-bite."
@Jenny_Trout @fransharpasatak @AlexandraErin @AdrianneKar @alau2 Albeit used to trip me up too. As a kid I thought it sounded vaguely German and had no idea what it meant since I read it as 'all-bite' 😬😂
And by the way, there's no shame in mispronouncing a word. As one person reminds us, it likely means you at least read it somewhere!
@alau2 My grandmother Jane used to say: “Better to mispronounce a word than to misuse it, because that means you read it somewhere.” (She was a reporter, then editor of a newspaper, and the reason Detroit started adding women to the phone book #legend)