Proununciation of Biopic

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Charlotte from Duluth, Minnesota.

Hi, Charlotte. Welcome.

Hi, Charlotte. Welcome to the program.

Thank you.

What’s going on?

Well, I have been seeing this word in print a lot, and it’s spelled B-I-O-P-I-C.

And I’ve been wondering how it’s pronounced.

And then actually, I was listening to a podcast recently,

And I heard one of the hosts say biopic and another host say biopic in the same episode,

And they didn’t seem to disagree about it.

But, like, I need to know.

So you say biopic, I say biopic?

Exactly.

And to me, they both sound wrong, so I don’t know.

Oh, really?

What is the word?

Is there a third option?

No.

What does the word mean?

Yeah, what does it mean?

Where did you hear this?

What was the podcast?

The podcast was Stuff You Should Know.

I didn’t remember what the podcast was about.

They’re on a tangent.

But, well, I mean, it’s a biography, but it’s a film.

And to me, like, biopic sounds like it should be hyphenated.

It’s like a little awkward.

And biopic rolls off the tongue better, but it sounds like it has to do with having two eyes.

Yeah, they don’t see well far away, right?

They’re nearsighted.

I like that.

I think you’re right that a hyphen would really help this term.

It’s one of those portmanteau words of a couple of words shoved together, right?

Biographical picture.

So these are movies that just basically tell a person’s life, right?

Okay, so a biopic makes sense.

A biographical picture.

Very good.

But none of the dictionaries I’m looking at here, none of the major dictionaries have a hyphen.

I wonder if it used to have it.

It strikes me as a variety word.

It is.

Like a variety the publication would use this word.

That is the earliest reference that I’ve seen to it.

Oh, very good.

And it didn’t have a hyphen then.

It was just those two words smushed together like that.

Biopic.

It does sound very much like the language of that Hollywood publication.

But I agree with you.

This is one of those words that, for me, you know, you see them in print, and they completely mess you up.

When I hear biopic, it sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

It sounds like biographical picture.

But I look at it, and it’s like, yeah, it looks like myopic.

And I also heard, it’s funny that you heard it on a podcast because just last week on local radio here,

I heard somebody who speaks Spanish as a first language say biopic.

You know?

So it’s very confusing.

Do you know what it reminds me of?

It’s the people who read the word M-I-S-L-E-D as mizzled.

This is something people have told me misled.

Really?

Yeah, before they heard the word, but they didn’t connect the pronunciation with the spelling.

Right, right.

It looked like mizzled, but it’s actually misled.

It reminds me of that.

You don’t know about the division of a word sometimes until you hear it or, ta-da, look at the etymology.

That’s something that etymologies are good for.

Right.

Well, that is the epitome of an example of that kind of thing.

Yeah.

That one always stops me short.

Biopic.

So, yeah, biopic is the correct pronunciation, just to be clear.

Biopic isn’t really cutting it.

Charlotte, thank you so much for calling.

Thank you.

All right, bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

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