Mispronunciations

“bedroom suit”

Devolution toward Simpler, Mispronunciations, Nouns

I have heard this phrase a lot.

Problem:
It is not a “suit”!

Explanation:
What the heck is a “bedroom suit”?

For that matter, what is a “living-room suit” or a “dining-room suit”?

Okay, I am kidding.

I know what these phrases mean.

I know what the people who say or write them are doing.

They are mispronouncing or misspelling the noun that means a furniture set, most particularly the set of furniture necessary to furnish one room.

That noun is “suite” — NOT “suit”! Talk about NOT Hooked on Phonics.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “bedroom suit” — 9,980,000 matches
  • “bedroom suite” — 9,520,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have favored the incorrect noun over the correct noun by a ratio of 1.05-to-1, which is horrible!

I believe that the favoring of “bedroom suit” over “bedroom suite” is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It is simpler to write and pronounce the four-letter, one-syllable “suit” than it is to write and pronounce the five-letter, 1.5-syllable “suite”.

Solution:
“bedroom suite”

“Perogative”

Mispronunciations, Misspellings, Nouns

I hear or see this occasionally.

Problem:
This is a mispronunciation or misspelling of a valid noun.

Explanation:
The valid noun is “prerogative” — spelled P-R-E-R-O-G-A-T-I-V-E.

The definition of this noun as it is most commonly used is a privilege or right limited to persons of a particular category or to a specific person.

This noun dates back to a Latin adjective in the late 1300s that literally meant voting first.

The noun “prerogative” exemplifies the value of knowing the roots of words in the English language.

The “rogative” portion of the noun is related to the word “interrogative”, which as an adjective usually means conveying or pertaining to a question.

The “pre” portion of the noun means before.

Knowing these two roots makes it easy to understand how the noun “prerogative” refers to a privilege or right limited to a person or specific group of people — such as voting first!

So replacing “pre” with “pe” in “prerogative” produces the nonsense word “perogative”.

I believe that the mispronunciation of “prerogative” as “perogative” is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis (and that this, in turns, leads to the misspelling of “prerogative”). It is simpler to say “perogative” — as if it were spelled P-U-H-R-O-G-A-T-I-V-E — than it is to say “prerogative”.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “perogative” — spelled P-E-R-O-G-A-T-I-V-E — 5,750,000 matches
  • “prerogative” — spelled P-R-E-R-O-G-A-T-I-V-E — 5,610,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have favored the incorrect word over the correct word by a ratio of 1.02-to-1, which is horrible!

Solution:
“Prerogative”

“shuddered windows”

Adjectives, Mispronunciations, Misspellings

I occasionally see or hear this phrase.

Problem:
The word “shuddered” is incorrect here.

Explanation:
I see or hear the phrase as part of a full sentence such as “The shuddered windows protected the glass from the hurricane.”

The intransitive verb “shudder” — with two “d”s and from which the word “shuddered” is derived — means to tremble or shake convulsively, as from cold, fear, or horror.

So the past participle “shuddered” cannot be used as an adjective to modify “windows” for two reasons:

  1. The verb “shudder” is intransitive and therefore its past participle cannot be used as an adjective.
  2. Even if “shuddered” could be used as an adjective, it would make no sense to use it to modify the noun “windows”.

The solution comes from realizing that Americans often mispronounce “t”s (as in “tango”) as “d”s (as in “David”).

So the word “shudder” — with two “d”s — is a typical mispronunciation, at least by Americans, of the word “shutter” — with two “t”s.

And given that the transitive verb “shutter” means to close with shutters, we have the solution.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following (with the quotation marks, to avoid variations) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “shuttered windows” — with two middle “t”s as in “tango” — 98,800 matches
  • “shuddered windows” — with two middle “d”s as in “David” — 97,400 matches

This tells me that Web authors have used the meaningful “shuttered windows” versus the meaningless “shuddered windows” by a ratio of 1.01-to-1, which is absolutely dreadful.

Solution:
“shuttered windows”