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

[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...