I grew up in southern Indiana, where a joke circulated that “shit” could be pronounced with four or five syllables: “shee-ee-uh-it,” or some such. This pronunciation wasn’t common in the college town of Bloomington, where I grew up, but I definitely heard it from kids who lived in the more rural areas outside of town.
Imagine my surprise not long ago when I discovered that Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary, one of the most trusted general dictionaries in the English language, lists the two-syllable “shee-it” as an alternate pronunciation of the word. And not only that: The software version of the dictionary, which lets you hear pronunciations of many words, even provides audio of the two-syllable pronunciation. Here it is. I’ll let you judge whether audio of the word “shit” is NSFW or not.
Did anyone else find themselves playing that like 18 times? I’m kind of worried.
Hey, Lindsay still reads my site! Awesome!
Wow. It’s like they took that right out of The Frisco Kid.
I’m so happy to see you’re into posting again. You were missed.
Thanks, MOB, I expect to be posting quite a bit in the coming weeks and beyond…
Seems OK to me. What prompted you to post this? That the alternative pronunciation is maybe non-standard or possibly a prank?
Although this is an obscure item, Non-English speakers might wish to hear alternate pronunciations.
Is this the only word in Webster’s 11th with alt. pronunciation? Might there be other alternates?
Leave a comment:
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Examples of Modern Alphabets, 1864.
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I’m Andrew Hearst, a New York-based writer, editor, designer, musician, and gadabout. You can learn a bit more about me here.
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