Word After Word

Last night at dinner the topic was “words you pronounced the wrong way in your head, maybe for a long time.” Junior and Jacob reported the classic triumverate: macabre, infared, epitome. We added “buffet,” with the “t”. But Katya won with “fugh-a-tiv.” A real hard-landing g. No easy escape out of the word at all. Using the hard g takes all the sexiness out of fugitive. It makes the fugh-a-tiv seem like he is caught, doltish, and almost a part of speech, not really at all a man on the run.

We are people who prefer the created pronunciation over the one that is right.  Now I am hoping my students will comment on this post with their examples. I want to make a long list. I want a whole shadow language, a bizarro lexicon, made up of the secret wrong words. What I love is that every always knows which word you really mean; two words, simultaneously, for the price of one. That is a good trick, syntactical sleight of hand.