Victuals and other odd words

[marcusmarcusrc]

Stimulated by a discussion at chenoameg's WordGames, I wanted to ask people to list words whose spellings are ridiculously different than their pronunciations:

eg.
vict.ual \'vit-*l\
col.o.nel \'k*rn-*l\
Worcestershire sauce (IPA [ˈwʊstə(ɹ)ʃ(ɪ)ə(r)])

EDIT: And how could I forget
boat.swain \'bo-s-*n\
(I learned this one when I was in the Tempest)

I still can't believe that until last week I thought that "victual" and "vittle" were two different words with different pronunciations that just happened to have the same meaning. Like the years I spent assuming that there were two military ranks, colonel and kernel. Only that misconception I corrected in middle school...

Comments

[marcusmarcusrc.livejournal.com]

Nope. At least, not a single dictionary I've looked at (including the OED) lists "vik-chew-ell" as an acceptable pronunciation. Weird, huh?

Heh. "Escape-aid". I remember I once got laughed at for saying "ling-er-eye" for lingerie (well, "linger" is a word, and you are just adding an ending, right?)

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my mom thought my pronunciation of lingerie was fun, so she didn't correct me.