Judi’s Reviews > There is No Zoo in Zoology, and Other Beastly Mispronunciations: An Opinionated Guide for the Well-Spoken > Status Update

caveat KAY-vee-at (KAY- as in cave, -at like at).

Until the 1960s, dictionaries gave no other pronunciation for this word. Webster 3 (1961) is the first of my sources to record an alternative pronunciation: KAH-eee-aht. since then variants have proliferated. We now have KAV-ee-aht (KAV- as I caviar), preferred by Webster's Ninth (1985) and Random House (1987); KAV-ee-at, preferred by the NBC Handbook. KAH-vee-aht,

Caribbean ka-ri-BEE-an.

the accents should be on the BE in Caribbean. The pronunciation kuh-RIB-ee-an, with the accent on the second syllable, has been recorded in dictionaries since th 1930s but is not preferred.

caramel KA-ruh-muul. Regionally, KAHR-muul.

The pronunciation KA-ruh-muul (KA-ruh as in carrot, -muul rhyming with pull) is preferred by all authorities, past and present. In the 1940s and 1950s, dictionaries began to list KAHR-muul (KAHR- like car) as a variant, but seemed insecure about its standing. Kenyon and Knott (1949) add the vague comment: "In many places [KAHR-muul] is often heard"; the American College

capricious kuh-PRISH-us, not kuh-PREE-shus.

The second syllable should rhyme with WISH, not with WE.
Kuh-PREE-shus, a spelling pronunciation (see Appendix) based on the word caprice (duh-PREES), was first recognized in the 1960s. It is now listed as an alternative in some dictionaries, but is not preferred. See prestigious.

calm KAHM.

Calm rhymes with bomb. The pronunciation KAHLM, which has been around for about thirty years, is recognized in some dictionaries but not preferred. In calm, pain, balm, qualm, psalm, and alms (and in balk, talk, walk, caulk, chalk and stalk) the L should be silent. (See Spelling Pronunciation in the Appendix.)

cadre KAD-ree or KAH-dur.

Cadre is a good example of how words taken directly from other languages become anglicized, gradually become more English in their pronunciation and usage.
All sources agree that the word comes from the French cadre, which in turn comes from the Latin quadric, but there seems to be some disagreement over when it entered English,
Random House II places its entry between 1905 and 1910.

Byzantine BIZ-in-teen or BIZ-in-tyn or bi-ZAN-tin.

this is one of those words that reveals how old you are, how old your dictionary is, or both. Orthe=oepic carbon-dating has shown that BIZ-in-tin ()not listed above) is preferred by people as old as Ancient Greece; bi-ZAN-tin is preferred by people as old as the hills; BIZ-in-tyn is preferred by people old enough to get away with trying to sound British by making

bulimia byoo-LIM-ee-uh.

Do not say boo-LEE-mee-uh or buh-LEE-mee-uh. These are recent and now very common mispronunciations.
Bulimia came into the language in the fourteenth century, and until 1987 the only recognized pronunciation was byoo-LIM-ee-uh. In the last ten or fifteen years the word has leapt from medical manuals into the vernacular, and in response to widespread confusion over how it is pronounced,...

brooch BROHCH.

Properly, brooch should rhyme with coach. The pronunciation BROOCH, which rhymes with smooch, is usually listed but not preferred. Both pronunciations exist because, historically, brooch, an ornamental clasp, is the same word as broach (now usually used as a verb to mean to utter, introduce, or open for the first time), and most dictionaries still give the alternative spelling broach for brooch.

Brobdingnagian BROB-ding-NAG-ee-in.

Be sure to pronounce the second syllable like the word ding. It is often mispronounced DIG, probably because the word is often misspelled Brobdingnagian.
The word refers to the gigantic inhabitants of the imaginary land of Brobdingnagian in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, or to anyone or anything like them. It should be capitalized.