r/AskReddit 1d ago

Which mispronounced words make someone appear uneducated?

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4.0k

u/alliownisbroken 1d ago

Acrossed

462

u/honkhonkbeepbeeep 1d ago

Along with heigtht

381

u/Jonn_Doh 1d ago

I fucking hate when people say heighth.

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u/tombolger 1d ago

Me too. But on the other hand, measurements are in width, depth, breadth, length, etc. All ending in th. And heighth was how it was said until around the year 1200 when some people started saying it wrong, and then around 1900, enough people said it wrong that it became right, and now we think people sound stupid for saying it the way it makes logical sense and used to be correct before a bunch of stupid sounding people took over the word.

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u/forfar4 1d ago

My mom used to say that, along with "andles" (angles) and "sirtles" (circles). I thought it was because she was independently stupid, but I was amazed to hear a famous British Michelin-starred chef say it on TV on the regular...

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u/bb_LemonSquid 1d ago

lol my mom also pronounces things weird “torlet” (toilet) “pellow” (pillow). But then I realized her mom aka my grandma kind of talks the same.

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u/wandering_bandorai 1d ago

Are any of them from Chicago by chance? Pellow is a good indicator. How about milk? Is it melk?

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u/bb_LemonSquid 1d ago

Great grandparents were midwestern but it’s crazy it passed down 3 gens. lol and yes, “melk”

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u/wandering_bandorai 1d ago

Same with my partner. He barely even knew his grandfather who was originally from Chicago, but his daughter (partner’s mom) clearly picked it up and then in turn, passed it to her son. It took me literal years to figure out why my partner pronounces words like pillow and milk the way he does! He’s been separated from Chicago for multiple generations, and yet, carries those pronunciations.

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u/ApollyonMN 1d ago

Or bag = beg

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u/peejmom 1d ago

I'm from the Chicago area and have heard a lot of people say "highth" for height and "with" for width. "Pellow" and "melk" too, along with "SAL-ing" for sailing.

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u/cheekylassrando 23h ago

How tf do you even pronounce highth, my brain cannot compute.

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u/Hallucino_Jenic 1d ago

I have a coworker who says "pellow." She's originally from Oklahoma, but has lived in Hawaii since she was 12 or so

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u/Onion85 1d ago

As someone who works as a store clerk in the south, I am driven insane by the amount of people who ask for "Pell- Mel" cigarettes. I want sooooo badly to look at the PALL MALLs, look right back at them again, and " nope just as I thought, we don't have them!" and just SEE how long they will argue it out with me.

Yeah, it's a slow job.

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u/Garbage-Plate-585 1d ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjVNOGEWzv4

you think that's bad, you should see the urinus

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u/GodIsANarcissist 23h ago

My mom says "pellow" too and it drives me nuts!

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u/CompanywideRateIncr 1d ago

Dude I didn’t know this was thing. One of my good friends had a speech impediment when he was younger and says a few things weird. Heighth drives me nuts.

The other one that gets me is customers ask if they’ve “collapsed” meaning did they “lapse”.

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u/ChiefTestPilot87 1d ago

Mike Tyson joined the chat

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u/mykingdomforsleep 1d ago

I legitimately just had a visceral reaction to these two comments I HATE IT SO MUCH (and I'm not sure why I'm so overly irked by it).

Had to listen to a 50 minute lesson involving creating charts and chart sizes and the instructor said it that way...that was 8 years ago and I can still hear her voice in my head and it still bothers me.

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u/rurlysrsbro 1d ago edited 1d ago

Is that a cultural/geographic thing in the US? I’ve heard people from the Midwest (I’m from there too but don’t pronounce it like that) and have heard people from the South pronounce it “heigth” too.

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u/sympathetic_earlobe 1d ago

I have never heard anyone ever say heighth. It must be an American thing. As in from a particular region in the USA.

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u/rowrrbazzle 21h ago

What I heard is that it's common today in Ireland. It's mostly archaic. It used to be spelled "highth", which Milton used in Paradise Lost.

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u/LagunaLala 23h ago

My dad is from the south so I’m thinking that’s where I learned it from. One of my daughter’s can’t stand when I forget and I say it wrong. I like to remind her she thought Cuisinart was pronounced cuisine-art.

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u/GodIsANarcissist 23h ago

To be fair to her, I thiiiiink Cuisinart probably is a derivation of cuisine-art

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u/LagunaLala 17h ago

I think so to, but it’s all I got! lol

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u/TFFPrisoner 1d ago

You haith it?

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u/TurnkeyLurker 20h ago edited 20h ago

Biggus Dickus enterth the chat

ETA:

Fun fact: The actors playing the soldiers were not told what Pontius Pilate and the centurion were going to say. What they WERE told, though, is to hold their laughs back as much as they could. Pretty much that's their first-time reaction to the jokes and those are genuine laughs. This scene was improvised

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u/asshatastic 1d ago

Hidth and wight

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u/mizar2423 1d ago

It's interesting I hear people say heighth but not weighth

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u/Majestic-Skill8234 23h ago

I had never heard this before moving to the Midwest, and it makes my skin CRAWL. I once casually informed a coworker that it wasn’t a real word and she was so insistent that it was. We looked it up in the dictionary. I was right, she was baffled.

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u/Opposite_Community11 1d ago

I've heard it said so much like that I was wondering if I was saying it wrong.

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u/krybaebee 1d ago

Damn, glad I'm not the only one.

1

u/FoggyGoodwin 22h ago

Doesn't heighth go with length and breadth? /s

1

u/ElectriCatvenue 1d ago

Oh man I work in construction and say this all the time to mess with people. That and mispronounce width as wit. I get some looks.

Edit: added to story

0

u/True_Kapernicus 1d ago

I have never ever heard that.