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]

If you look at the OED, variations of the "vittel" spelling came first, and sometime around the 1520s it looks like the "victual" spelling crept in. (With lots of vitayles and victuayles thrown around for fun). But all the dictionaries list "vittle" as the only pronunciation...


Yeah, rhyming words are often very confusing/amusing. For example, in "you are old father William" I always pronounce "again" to match "I feared it might injure the brain", even though I normally pronounce it closer to "a-gen".