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October 20, 2009 5:52 am
I've heard many people pronounce ENVELOPE as "onn-velope" instead of "enn-velope." Can you tell us anything about how that pronunciation got started? Is it considered acceptable or correct?
2 Replies
October 20, 2009 6:46 am
I've heard both. I find myself using both. Merriam-Webster says its because it's from French and that it has had plenty of time to lose its French-sounding "en" so that both pronunciations have won "respectability." See:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/envelope
October 20, 2009 11:24 am
I find it interesting that the verb form envelop creates an entirely different phonetic ambiguity in the first syllable: en- or in-
M-W envelop