Is Rhetoric Pronunciation Stressed on the First Syllable?

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, Martha, this is Carrie Ann, and I’m with my cousin, Danielle. Hello.

Hey, Carrie Ann and Danielle. What’s up?

What’s up?

And where are you?

We’re calling from Minneapolis, Minnesota, and we had a question about pronunciation of the word rhetoric or rhetoric.

Okay.

Yeah.

What’s your experience with those words, or that word?

So, I mean, I think when I learned it, I was reading, so I think I probably pronounced it rhetoric.

But after talking, I started to say rhetoric.

And Danielle says rhetoric.

And we’ve talked to a couple people about it, and they say it’s actually two different words.

Who talked to you about rhetoric and said that it was a different word?

My brother said that it was two different words, and another person that I work with said it was two different words.

I could see, were they talking about rhetorical as being a different word?

Yeah, I think that’s kind of what they’re going off of.

Okay, because I don’t believe that the pronunciation of it as rhetoric was ever a word on its own.

I think they must have been referring to rhetorical because rhetoric has always been the pronunciation for R-H-E-T-O-R-I-C in both U.S. and U.K. English.

And we can find this as far back as pronunciation dictionaries go in both languages.

And that’s because it fits into a weird class of words where that third to the last syllable is pronounced.

And usually it’s the second to the last syllable, but words like choleric and turmeric and lunatic and heretic, I’m sorry, heretic and politic are pronounced that way.

So rhetoric has never been the pronunciation for that.

But, you know, it’s weird, Martha, the way that we learn these words from reading.

And they surface perfectly well while we’re reading.

But when we start speaking to them, we’re like, oh, wait a second.

That’s not right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Grant and I always say that if somebody is pronouncing a word like that incorrectly, it’s probably because they’re a big reader.

Yeah.

Their reading got ahead of their speaking and their hearing.

Yeah.

And we’ve had that experience.

I mean, I used to say epitome instead of epitome, you know.

Oh, yeah.

Or the number of people who say hyperbole instead of hyperbole or infrared instead of infrared.

Well, that is good to know.

All right.

So how do we do?

Did we help you out?

Yes, that did.

That did, actually.

And now I can tell everybody that it’s rhetoric instead of rhetoric.

Yeah.

And that we said it was fine.

And all you did was you had a reading thing that kind of got in the way of your speaking thing.

And you sorted it out.

And you moved on.

Yeah.

All right, you two take care of yourself and be well, all right?

Yeah, you two.

Call again sometime.

Thanks, you two.

Bye.

Thank you.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.