Along the lines of my Favorite Pretentious Terms of the Slate Podcast Literati, a related list: words most people don’t know; that a few learn, but only learn it through reading books, so they don’t know how to pronounce it. List to be updated from time to time.
[See also my list of Annoying & Pretentious Terms; and Interesting and Notable Words and Phrases of the Slate Podcast Literati]
- Ayn (they say “Ann”)
- detritus (often mispronounced as DEH-tri-tuss)
- imprimatur
- Mises (all over the map–MY-zeez, MEE-zeez)
- premises (one philosopher I know called it “preh-MY-sess”)
- short-lived (rhymes with dived, not lived)
- stare decisis (all over the map)
- Stephan (they say “Steven”)
- voir dire (all over the map)
- welsch (“welch”)
In an effort to determine the correct pronunciations of these, because I have definitely fallen into the category of only reading most of them, it seems that some do have multiple “accepted” pronunciations. Short-lived, specifically, was one I wanted to confirm and found two sources suggesting both versions are acceptable; that isn’t to say years of bastardization isn’t capable of putting something technically incorrect in any or all dictionaries. Imprimatur was also listed as having multiple pronunciations, M-W has two and Dictionary.com has three.