In November 1991 , Eric Wolfe posted in the Usenet grouprec.arts.booksregarding the wordmisled , which had appeared in the former message . Wolfe knew now that it was the past - tense form of the verbmislead , pronounce “ miss - LED . ” But for a good 15 or 20 years , he ’d misread it as “ MY - zuld , ” as though it were the preceding - tense contour ofmisle .
He ended his confession with a question : “ Has anyone had similar experience ? ”
Oh , had they . One caseinvolvedconfusion over why one clothing detail was n’t called a “ cloe ” ; anothercenteredon the late - stage realization thatpolicywasn’t “ police - y. ” One usercoppedto having “ labored under the notion that whodunit novels were classify as to quality … by the ‘ who d ’ unit . ” Some citizenry cited pop culture reference work to the confusion overmisled : It had make out up in Anne Tyler ’s 1985 novelThe Accidental Touristand the BBC ’s 1975 boob tube adjustment of Richard Llewellyn ’s novelHow Green Was My Valley .
The conversation soonmovedto a more germane Usenet group , alt.usage.english , wheremisledand othermisled - like pronunciation error became arecurring topic . In June 1997 , Donna Richouxsuggestedcalling them “ misles . ” She believe the term was “ befittingly difficult to figure out how to enounce , ” considering that various substance abuser had report mispronouncingmisledas “ MY - zuld , ” “ drizzle ” ( likegrizzled ) , and even “ miled ” ( in the vein ofisle ) . Technically , mislewas already a Holy Scripture : It ’s a nonstandard spelling of the verbmizzle , meaning either“to mizzle ” or “ to confuse , muddle , mystify , ” per theOxford English Dictionary . But Richoux ’s nominalized interpretation was new territory , and it stuck .
Doing the Splits
What exactly stipulate as a misle , meanwhile , is still up for argument . “ As with many linguistic term ( notably , ‘ word ’ ) , it is n’t really that well-situated to follow up with a watertight definition,”Beatrice Santorini , a senior fellow in the University of Pennsylvania ’s department of philology , tells Mental Floss .
Many often - cited misles do have this in vulgar , though : The mispronunciation occurs because the utterer incorrectly carve up up the part of the word . For instance , you assumeawryis a combining ofaw-(likeawfulandawesome ) and - ry(likescaryandfurry)—so you misinterpret it as “ AWE - ree . ” But it ’s in reality “ a+wry , ” hence the accurate pronunciation “ uh - RYE.”Biopicis a exchangeable case : It attend like the prefixbi - and the suffix - opic , so you cerebrate “ bye - AH - moving-picture show , ” likemyopic . Butbiopicdoesn’t contain those two parts : It ’s “ bio+pic , ” abbreviate frombiographical picture — so , “ BYE - oh - pick . ”
Sometimes it ’s less about morpheme than phoneme . You see the - th - ingoatherd , for example , and your mind jumps to “ GOATH - erd ” before you may treat that it’sgoatandherd . Or you pronouncedeiceras “ die - er ” instead of “ Delaware - ICE - er ” because the -ei- call to mind word likeheightandfeisty .
But the understanding for the misapprehension is n’t always quite so clear . Takemisled , the countersign that start it all . It could be foxy in part because we ’re used to de - emphasize - ledin past tense - tense verb likehassled , title , andpuzzled . Santorini has another hypothesis . “ I think the thing that really favors the misanalysis is that the prefixmisis so comparatively long compared to the stemled , ” she read .
The Misle-verse of Madness
All this is not to say that a mispronunciation must involve wrong part - splitting for be a straight misle ; again , mislean unofficial sorting with no formal definition . You could contend that a misle is any word whose spelling pass on elbow room for muddiness . In that cause , words likeboatswain(pronounced “ BO - Sunday ” ) andcolonel(“KER - nul , ” likekernel ) , which simply look a lot different than they sound , would qualify . You could also toss in foreign - languageloanwordslikerendezvous , which many a new referee has interpret as “ REN - dez - voos . ”
The termmisleshas even been used as a verbatim synonym forbook words — Logos commonly mispronounced because people typically encounter them on the page before ever hearing them . “ To my mind , the two term are fairly orthogonal , ” Santorini say . “ For me , book intelligence are words that are not part of the vernacular , whether misanalyzed or not . Misles , by definition , are misanalyzed , but not necessarily terribly bookish . It ’s plausibly true , though , that volume words have a greater chance of being misanalyzed . ”
Plenty of misles are indeed part of our everyday dictionary : Motherhas been mistaken for “ MOTH - er ” ( evidently someone who works with moths in some unspecified mode ) , andapplyfor “ apple - y. ” Santorini recently had a misle experience with a familiar password in her first language , German : “ The other sidereal day , I misparsed the German ‘ be - inhalt - en ’ ( to take ) as ‘ bein - halten , ’ ( to leg - hold , a possible though non - existing verb ) , but the intended verb is n’t terribly rare . ”
And if even linguists can be misled by misles , there ’s no shame in letting one get the dependable of you . In fact , it can be pretty funny . Take a look at 10 of our favorite misles below , many of them tear from alistthat Richoux pile up in alt.usage.english in 2002 .
1. Barfly
Abarfly — comprisingbarandfly — is someone who spends a lot of time in bar . But the term has been misinterpret as “ BARF - lee ” ( as in “ barf+ly ” ) , which could easy be a slangy synonym fordisgusting .
2. Bedraggled
Bedraggledisn’t “ bed+raggled . ” It ’s “ be+draggled , ” from a verb substance “ to moisture ( apparel , skirts , or the like ) so that they drag , or hang limp and clinging with wet , ” per theOxford English Dictionary .
3. Codeveloper
Codeveloperis “ co+developer , ” but it ’s been misinterpret as “ code+veloper”—one who “ velops ” code , which is n’t a thing .
4. Coworker
Similarly , coworkerhas been misinterpret as “ cow+orker”—one who “ orks ” cows .
5. Draught
Draughtlooks like it would rime withtaughtandcaught , but it ’s sound out exactly likedraft .
6. Epitome
Many early reviewer have learned the severe room thatepitomeis judge “ eh - PIH - tuh - mee , ” not “ EP - ih - tohm . ”
7. Infrared
It ’s “ infra+red , ” not “ in+frared , ” so you say “ IN - fruh - red . ”
8. Sidereal
Sidereal , meaning “ starlike , ” is pronounced “ sigh - DEER - electrical engineering - ull , ” likecerealandethereal . It ’s not “ side+real . ”
9. Underfed
Underfed — as in “ under+fed”—has been mistaken for “ un+derfed , ” meaning “ not derfed , ” which is n’t a thing , either . ( Thoughderfdid once survive : It ’s a medievalnounmeaning “ trouble ” and anadjectivemeaning “ sheer ” and “ unfearing , ” among other matter . It ’s also afake numbercreated by Carly in the Nickelodeon TV seriesiCarly . )
10. Warplane
It ’s a warfare plane , not a warp lane .
Read More Articles About Mispronounced Terms:
- This article was updated to clarify thatsiderealis enounce “ sigh - DEER - ee - ull , ” with a longi , not “ sid - EER - ee - ull ” with a short one .
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