Emphasis of Defense

Hello, you have A Way with Words?

Hi, my name is Daniel, and I’m calling from Dallas and have a question for you.

Not necessarily on what a word means, but more on the pronunciation of the word.

All right, fire away, Daniel.

Well, I was hanging out with my 94-year-old grandfather, and he’s got a plaque on his wall that is for the logo of the Department of Defense.

And I looked at it, I’ve seen it a million times, and I read it out loud, and I read it as Department of Defense.

And when I read it as defense, it just sounded really weird to me, and I started thinking about defense versus defense.

And you never hear anyone say the Department of Defense. You hear them say the Department of Defense.

And sort of, I guess, on the flip side of that, you never hear anyone chanting at a football game, defense, defense.

And so I wanted to call and talk to you guys and see what your intake would be on sort of the different pronunciations of that and why it is that way.

Yeah, really interesting. Daniel, do you watch a lot of sports?

Enough. You know, I’m not a rabid fan of any particular sport.

I’m sort of a homer, as we like to say, so I support our Dallas area sports teams, but that’s probably about it.

Oh, homer.

What were you thinking when you pronounced it that way from the plaque? Why did you say it that way at that time?

I don’t know. I just, you know, it’s the word. It’s written that way. You know, you can, it’s commonly said as defense. It’s, you know, read as defense. You never hear someone say defense attorney. It’s a defense attorney.

Right. Good point. Good point. And you’re exactly right that the traditional pronunciation is that defense with the accent on the second syllable. Same with offense. But yes, sports talk seems to have influenced the way that people pronounce those in certain contexts.

And I think probably the reason this is just a guess, and maybe Grant has a different idea, but I think it’s because you’re talking about two things in opposition.

The team on this side that’s doing one thing and the team on that side that’s doing the other thing.

And so you sort of contrast them by saying defense versus offense.

It’s sort of like when we talk about affect versus effect.

Right.

So it’s just sort of a sports lingo, you think, that’s crept into our everyday vernacular?

Yeah, all of the authorities that I’ve read on this particular pronunciation emphasize that they believe it came from sports.

And in fact, if you look at pronunciations of this word in news environments, you’ll have a newscast where the entire newscast may talk about, you know, rebels took the offense today in such and such country.

And then they’ll say, now Mike with sports and Mike will talk about defense.

And it’s really interesting to even have in that same context some people probably in the same communities using these two different pronunciations.

So it’s very context specific.

I wouldn’t call it wrong.

No, it’s almost accepted.

Yeah, but it’s accepted in sports with unremarked upon.

There’s an interesting thing.

Brian Garner, who we love to talk about, he’s got this great book, Garner’s Modern American Usage, has a language change index, and he puts this one at a four out of five, meaning the change is almost complete, at least within sports contexts.

Very interesting to know.

I appreciate it.

I was, you know, just thinking about it and, again, got the humorous thoughts of having people at a game, you know, chanting Duff and just having everyone look at you like you’re just completely out of place.

Right.

There’s no grammar in sports.

They’ve committed some kind of grammatical offense.

Exactly.

Great.

Well, Martin Grant, thank you very much.

Oh, sure.

Thanks for your call, Daniel.

I really appreciate it.

Take care now.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

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