Beth in Spring Hill, Tennessee, grew up saying bedroom suite and was startled to hear bedroom suit in Georgia and Tennessee. Both forms can mean a matching group of bedroom furniture. Bedroom suit is especially associated with the American South, while suite is more common elsewhere and may sound a bit fancier because of its Frenchified pronunciation. Both words go back to a Latin root meaning “to follow,” which fits things that go together. To avoid judgment either way, bedroom set works too. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of ““Bedroom Suit” vs. “Bedroom Suite”: Are Both Correct for Furniture Sets?”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Beth from Spring Hill, Tennessee. How are you?
Excellent. How are you doing, Beth?
Hey, Beth.
Welcome to the show.
Good. I’ve got a question about the word suite, S-U-I-T-E.
-huh.
I was born and raised in New Jersey. I moved down to Georgia when I was about 28 and got into a conversation about bedroom furniture, and a friend called it a suit.
And I’m now living in Tennessee, and I’ve also heard the word bedroom suit in Tennessee, and it just bothers me.
A suit is something a man wears to work.
A suite is a bedroom suite or a suite of furniture.
So I was wondering about the origination of that pronunciation.
So in New Jersey, they say suite for a bunch of bedroom furniture.
Yeah.
Well, that fits pretty much with what we know about the difference between suit and suite.
Both of those terms are applied to a set of bedroom furniture.
And particularly in the South, you’ll see suit, S-U-I-T, applied to that.
And it’s interesting because both of those words go way back to a Latin word that means to follow.
Okay.
And that kind of explains how both of them developed because they both have to do with things that go together, things that are connected.
I mean, as you said, a suit is like a set of clothing that all fits together.
And a suite is, you know, you usually think of that as a group of rooms that are connected and a hotel.
And I’m not sure why those differences occurred in terms of regional differences, but I’m betting it had to do with people coming from different parts of England to this country.
Would that be your guess, Grant?
Yeah, it’s something like that.
There’s an interesting fact that the suit pronunciation used to be one of the old pronunciations of S-U-I-T-E.
So you did have two pronunciations of that word, but they both coexisted, and they fixed themselves in different parts of the English-speaking world.
The other thing is the sweet pronunciation is kind of marked as fancy.
It’s Frenchified.
So if you want to seem a little sophisticated, you might say sweet.
I’m sophisticated if I’m from New Jersey.
Well, some people will take the sweet pronunciation just because they want to show that they’re educated.
You know what I’m saying?
But generally, there’s a regional difference here, and you can map it out.
You can literally put pins on a map and show that at least these days that the people who say bedroom suite tend to be everywhere but the South, and the people who say bedroom suit tend to be in the American South.
So when you can map something like that and show that there’s a regionality to it, you can generally show that it has to do with patterns of settlement and has to do with historical migrations of people from certain parts of the English-speaking world.
Awesome.
Yeah, it’s pretty cool, right?
Well, thank you so much for clearing that up.
Happy to help.
One thing I should say, if you feel like you’re being judged for saying suit or suite, there’s an out.
Just say set instead.
Bedroom set.
A set.
Okay.
Well, thank you.
Yeah, sure.
All righty.
That’s very interesting.
I appreciate your time.
Our pleasure.
Thanks for calling, Vet.
Bye.
