Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

That's a new one on me. But I wouldn't assume he made it up as a joke; often people who read a lot get pronunciations wrong and learn better only later when they get around to saying them aloud.

Sometimes much later. For years I had a word in my vocabulary, a verb "misle", pronounced "mizzle", which means to deceive or fool. The past participle, meaning "fooled", was pronounced "mizzled" and spelled "misled". I carried that word around in my head for at least a decade before discovering that "misled" is the past participle not of "misle" but of "mislead". I'd just assumed "misle" was more or less synonymous with "mislead".

It gets worse: I had another verb, "infrare", which meant to convert visible light to a lower frequency below the limits of human vision. Light which has been converted in this fashion has been "infrared", after which it is in the infra-red range. Again, at some point a decade or two later I suddenly noticed. . . .

This American Life did a show on this theme a year or two ago; they didn't mention "infrare", but "misle" was in there, the only difference being that apparently most people pronounce it "MY-zzle".

Long, long ago in an episode of That Girl, Ann's father dropped by to stay for a few days and her boyfriend Don showed up early for breakfast. When her father came down to join them, he remarked jokingly that it was nice to see that the world was still running this morning, that while they were all asleep nothing had gone awree (pronounced "AWE-ree"). Don laughed appreciatively, but it turned out Ann's father hadn't been kidding; it was a word he'd always mispronounced in ignorance. Followed a tirade: "Not all of us can go to college, you know!" I figure that little slip must have come from some comedy writer's experience, like my "mizzled". It must happen a lot, especially, as I said, in people who read a lot as children. Could be your father-in-law had the same experience and just kept the memory to trot out as a joke, now and again.

Bob Bridges said:

This American Life did a show on this theme a year or two ago; they didn't mention "infrare", but "misle" was in there, the only difference being that apparently most people pronounce it "MY-zzle".

I share some of your history with misle/mizzle.

Chemistry class was a source of a couple more misreadings: reagent and cation both "mizzled" my inner voice when reading the textbook, and it took me several classes of listening to the teacher pronouncing re-agent and cat-ion before I associated the sounds with the words I had been reading as sounding like regent and the last two syllables of vacation.

My dad had a habit of making debris sound like derbish. It wasn't an intentional joke. I knew because he would occasionally correct himself. I never asked, but I assumed he learned it wrong when he was young and found it hard to drop.

I am a native german, and for me it is easy to understand how you'd come up with something like "skeDUHley". It took me a couple of months to pronounce the word in an appropriate way (I guess, there is still a fair amount of german accent to it ). As you might know, in german usually the second to last syllable is the one that gets accentuated.

I found some Internet references to this pronunciation from western Pennsylvania to New Zealand. In some cases, it is presented as an intentional joke. In others, it is presented derisively. In one, it claims it to be a regional pronunciation in western Pennsylvania.

Derisive in New Zeeland

A candidate for a country constituency was referring to some legislation the other evening when he completely mystified the electors by a reference to "skedoolee" 1 and "skedoolee" 2. Eventually it dawned on the electors that the candidate was referring to schedule 1 and schedule 2 of an Act passed by Parliament.

NZ Derision

Intentional gag in Santa Barbara, CA

Schedule
Or as I prefer to pronounce it “skedoolee.”

Blogger gag

Claim of PA regionalism

Schedule is pronounced "skedoolee", thats the western Pa pronounciation. (sic x 3)
Hobbsy
Moderator

PA Regionalism

I'm not surprised. The context seemed a bit suspect. That is why I emphasized "claim" so much (and included the sic). I hope I didn't offend.

As children, my friends and I deliberately and relentlessly butchered pronunciations, certainly including skeh-DOO-lee and DEH-briss. Debut was dee-BUTT. Others may come to me, but it was so pervasive that particular examples do not stand out. It was great sport to make others think we didn't know better; more delightful was teaching the wrong pronunciation to people who didn't know a word, seeing that they were, yes, "mizzeled." In fact, as I recall, we did this so often that it became second nature, requiring some effort not to fall into it in class. Some teachers understood, but others just never were kids themselves.

Peter

As a cartographer who lived in the Mojave for a while (a hint to the origin of my nickname), I feel I *have* to correct something here.

Basin and Range refers to a landscape of isolated mountains (ranges) surrounded by flats (basins).

Township and Range is a grid system for describing location within a state, and the baseline is the line used for numbering north and south (township) or east and west (range). A typical quarter-section name might read something like this: T21N R15E Sec31NW.