Discussion Forum (Archived)
Guest
During the November 17 broadcast, Grant raised "ornery" as an example of retronyms (from "ordinary"). A caller tried to correct him, suggesting it should be said with three syllables. Intrepid Grant shot back, nearly -- dare I say -- ornery, advising that it was correctly pronounced "on-ry."
I had never heard the two-syllable pronunciation until I was out to dinner on a Pacific island with two girls from Kansas in 1994. Whatever their merits, the ladies did not have a way with words, and I chalked their "on-ry"-ness up as yet another quaint, Midwestern custom, like barn raising or voting Republican. (Effete East Coast snob? Moi?)
But now you give me pause. I find some sources with three syallables, and a few that list as a second or third alternate a two-syallable version. Grant, can you explain why the two-syllable version should be preferred?
Personal bias, I suppose, leads me to prefer the two-syllable version. I shouldn't have led folks to believe that one was better than another, since with dialect words a linguist or lexicographer just can never really rightly make the claim that one version is superior. Though I do find that the pronunciation OR-ner-ree rings false to my ears, and if I was in my home state of Missouri, I'd think you were from elsewhere or that you learned the word from a book rather than from family.
The best source for the pronunciation of this word, I think, is the Dictionary of American Regional English. It gives at least six different pronunciations of the word, including two- and three-syllable versions, versions with and without the first R pronounced, and versions with the first syllable being ORN, AHN, or ANN.
For whatever it's worth, I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and I almost always heard the OR-ner-ree version of the word, and less often ORN-ree, and less often still ON-ree. Usually it was used to ask why someone was so upset, as in, "What's got you so ornery?" Nowadays people ask, "What's got your undies in a bundle?"
I think your attempt to remain humble among your Missouri kin explains it all: The pronunciation must vary wildly by the geography of the speaker. My Boston-bred wife, for example, challenged me on the very existence of any two-syllable pronunciation.
And she knows nothing of the girls from Kansas.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
1 Guest(s)