

11 Common Words We've Been Saying Wrong This Entire Time

Let's nip this bad habit in the "bud" (and not in the "butt").


A 2015 study conducted for Dictionary.com found that 47% of all Americans are irritated by mispronunciations and correct their family and friends. They can trip you up, mix you up and make you sound like an ignoramus. Here are some of the worst offenders.


(n) berries from a palm tree from the Amazon rain forest

Acai berries, called a superfood, frequently turn up in juice blends and supplements. So it's a pity that so many of us can't say the word correctly. Let's solve this: It's not ACK-ah-ee, it's not ah-KAI, and it's not ah-SIGH. It's ah-sigh-EE, with a soft "c" and a stress on the last syllable. Blame the early Portuguese explorers of Brazil, who saw indigenous rain-forest people eating a strange palm tree berry that they called in their Tupi-Guarani language ïwaca'i (something that cries or expels water). The Portuguese wrote this down as açaí.

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Chaise longue

(n) long, low chair with a back along half of its length and one arm

As you can see, it's not "chaise lounge." But if you think so, you're not alone: The incorrect spelling shows up in listings for stores including Ikea, Walmart, Home Depot and Amazon. The word chaise longue means, literally, "long chair" in French, not "lounge chair." The piece of furniture was first made in ancient Egypt by lashing palm sticks together with rawhide. It sure has a longue history!

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Champ at the bit

(idiom) to be impatient while being delayed

At the Kentucky derby before a race, many horse are champing (not chomping) at the bit. Champing means chewing or grinding noisily. The idiom has been around since at least 1577, and most people say chomping, probably because champing is such an uncommon verb. 

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(n) frozen dessert of fruit juice, water, sugar and usually cream

Sherbet doesn't rhyme with Herbert. But for some reason, many people throw an extra "r" into the word, possibly because it somehow sounds more "right." One in six people write it with the extra letter, and far more say it incorrectly. (And don't confuse this one with sorbet, either.)

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(n) computer graphic image; an acronym for Graphics Interchange Format

Unlike its counterpart the jpeg, which can only be pronounced like, well, "JAY-peg," the GIF is problematic. Is it "giff" with a hard "g" or "jiff" with a soft one? Steve Wilhite says it's "jiff"... and he should know since he developed GIFs for Compuserve. He chose to pronounce it that way because it sounded like Jif, the peanut butter brand. Employees would do a riff on Jif TV ads, saying, "Choosy developers choose GIF."

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(adj) wanting to or causing trouble, most often in a playful way

Even former President Herbert Hoover fell prey to the "let's add an "i" in there and make it four syllables syndrome, making the word "mis-CHEE-vee-us." Fun fact? It and grievous are the only two words in English that end in "vous," while a greater number end in "vious" (devious, envious, previous, etc.). 

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Spit and image

(idiom) exact likeness, doppelgänger, duplicate

No, we didn't mean to type "spitting image." The phrase is three words — "spit and image" — and it's one of the most common mispronounced phrases. Some say it comes from a voodoo ceremony; others say it evolved from "spirit and image." Still others say it is biblical in origin — referring to God using spit and mud to make Adam in his own image.

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(n) a thing used to transmit or transport something

If you want to sound smart, we vehemently say don't pronounce the "h" in vehicle (or in vehement, for that matter). Most grammarians eschew the "h," but it wasn't always this way. Educated people in the 1800s were told to say "VEE-hi-cal" with a distinct "h."

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(n) thick Italian soft dumplings

The problem is that the Italian gn has an ny sound. It shouldn't be that hard: Most of us say lasagna correctly. The problem is that in English, a "g" an the beginning of a word is usually silent (as in gnome). And since gnocchi is plural, in the extremely unlikely event you want just one of these, ask for a gnoccho

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Daylight Saving Time

(phrase) when clocks are advanced during summer months by one hour so that in the evening hours daylight is experienced later

Think about it and be honest — do you say "Daylight Saving Time" or "Daylight Savings Time"? It's an easy association to make, probably because of the associations with common terms like savings bank and savings account

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(n or adj) a wedding; of or pertaining to a wedding

It looks like it should have three syllables, but it's two syllables. It's not "nup-shi-al" or "nup-shu-al." It comes from the French nuptial. In its first printed appearance in English in a 1490 translation of Eneydos, it was spelled as the somewhat odd-looking but phonetically sound "nupcyalle." 

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You're Saying It Wrong book cover Petras
Ten Speed Press
Brush up on more words

Edited excerpt from You're Saying It Wrong, an illustrated guide to the most commonly mispronounced words, teaching their correct pronunciations along with pithy forays into their fascinating etymologies and histories. Ross and Kathryn Petras are the authors of the #1 best-selling page-a-day calendar The 365 Stupidest Things Ever Said (now in its 21st year with over 4.5 million copies sold), Wretched Writing, It Always Seems Impossible Until It's Done, The Anthology of Really Important Modern Poetry, and more. 

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