"Ennui" - that's a bitch the first time you try to pronounce it.
Oh and "macabre." Ultimately you need to watch a lot of overblown horror parodies until you've heard "Master of the Macabre" to get it right.
Also the names "Sean" and "Geoff."
Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, nail polish, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.
"Ennui" - that's a bitch the first time you try to pronounce it.
Oh and "macabre." Ultimately you need to watch a lot of overblown horror parodies until you've heard "Master of the Macabre" to get it right.
Also the names "Sean" and "Geoff."
So, which words did you mispronounce and how embarrassing was it when you were corrected?
Segue and archipelago.
Mine was epitome. I was reading out loud to my mother when I was around 10-11 and pronounced it "ep'-i-tome." Imagine my surprise when she corrected it to "e-pit'-o-me." I've been suspicious of words ending in "e" ever since. Is it English or is it Greek???
fact: elizabeth taylor outlived the person who wrote her NY Times obit.
Wow.
I know there are a couple of words I still don't have solidly in my head, but I can't remember what they are right now.
Segue
Right?
and archipelago.
I actually corrected my high school English teacher on this one. He sort of blinked and said, "No, I think you're right."
Guillotine.
epitome
Oh yeah, I definitely thought that was pronounced like it looks. Don't remember when I found out the right way, though.
So, which words did you mispronounce and how embarrassing was it when you were corrected?
Proprietor (PROP-uh-teer), Toledo (TOE-le-doh), and mausoleum (maw-SO-lee-um). I still get mausoleum wrong half the time. It was embarrassing and infuriating. I was a kid, in all three cases, and it was my family laughing at me.
I still don't know how to pronounce archipelago.
ark-ə-PEL-ah-go.
inchoate Mamet(As in David) Talking about David Ma*may* was way more embarrassing cause I actually said it out loud and thought I was slick, besides.Sometimes I still get flushed cheeks if he is reviewed and I see it. Keith Olbermann used "inchoate" in a commentary so that was a private embarrassment thinking how often I thought "en-choat" and nodded at myself. Of course, my dad sometimes made fun of me for using exotic words *correctly* too, so I probably have many issues about that kind of thing.