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

[goes-placidly.livejournal.com]

Weskit? I'm English and I have never come across that one before... Place names are always good though (try Gloucester, Leicester, Norwich, anywhere ending in 'ham'). And there's always George Bernard Shaw's famous poem, Hints on Pronunciation for Foreigners. The first verse (there are several) follows...

I take it you already know
of tough and bough and cough and dough.
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.

[astra-nomer.livejournal.com]

You've reminded me of the incident in the car last week, when DS1 read the logo on a rental truck as "Bud get" and I had to tell him something along the lines of: good try, but English is complicated.

[goes-placidly.livejournal.com]

Similarly - it took me ages to work the huge numbers of companies in the US called EZ something. Because where I come from it just doesn't work...