miscellaneous words
hey, I can do this one!
I'm guessing tomorrow's word will be execrable.
abominable, detestable, execrable, hateful
oh wait, those are all synonyms for odious; that would make it a theme, of sorts.
never mind..
What if...just what if...tomorrow's word is
miscellaneous?!
I believe the British say the word "miscellany" with the accent on the "cell" syllable. (miss-SELL-uh-knee) Sounds much better.
miss-SELL-uh-knee --that's the way I've always said it. Never knew there was any other way to say it until a couple of people here said MISS-uhl-ay-nee.
Here is a good use of miscellany in one of Frost's poems, which I heard sung once as a choral work:
A Girl's Garden
A neighbor of mine in the village
Likes to tell how one spring
When she was a girl on the farm, she did
A childlike thing.
One day she asked her father
To give her a garden plot
To plant and tend and reap herself,
And he said, "Why not?"
In casting about for a corner
He thought of an idle bit
Of walled-off ground where a shop had stood,
And he said, "Just it."
And he said, "That ought to make you
An ideal one-girl farm,
And give you a chance to put some strength
On your slim-jim arm."
It was not enough of a garden,
Her father said, to plow;
So she had to work it all by hand,
But she don't mind now.
She wheeled the dung in the wheelbarrow
Along a stretch of road;
But she always ran away and left
Her not-nice load,
And hid from anyone passing.
And then she begged the seed.
She says she thinks she planted one
Of all things but weed.
A hill each of potatoes,
Radishes, lettuce, peas,
Tomatoes, beats, beans, pumpkins, corn,
And even fruit trees.
And yes, she has long mistrusted
That a cider-apple tree
In bearing there today is hers,
Or at least may be.
Her crop was a miscellany
When all was said and done,
A little bit of everything,
A great deal of none.
Now when she sees in the village
How village things go,
Just when it seems to come in right,
She says, "I know!
"It's as when I was a farmer. . . ."
Oh, never by way of advice!
And she never sins by telling the tale
To the same person twice.
Robert Frost
There lives a poor soon-to-be wife
Whose husband sees marriage as strife.
Upon wedding, his name...
Well it sure won't be plain:
Quoth his girl, Miss Alainey, "That's life!"
you and Mav are rockin' the house, Ani!!
not me 
Did you LEARN it that way??? That is, is this a regional thang, or what? Nobody here says it that way. I honestly cannot imagine actually saying MISSuhlaney. Have I been doing it wrong all my life?
listen more closer, Mz. J.
MISS uh LANE ee
I'd only heard it in my head and assumed it that way, reading; until I heard it and thought naught of it since I'd been right all along. :-)
Nobody here says it that way.
You gonna take the word of people who can't even pronounce the name of their own city right?
I don't know anybody in Puyallup.
Have I been doing it wrong all my life?
'course not Miz J - those uncultivated northerners'll say any ole thang! Your diction's true to Old Country roots :)
tsurely tsuwm mitstake
It’s a regional thang, to be sure:
How the word’s on your tongue and your jaw…
There is no ‘right’ way
Evolution holds sway
Despite what the rednecks may roar!
<slowly shaking head>
how can you RPs put the accent on the schwa?!
how can you RPs put the accent on the schwa?!
Not to metion rhyming sure, jaw and roar.
<slowly shaking head>
It's a schwa-fire hit ;)
metioning no names, hey, don mess wid a rhymey limey :)
[whisper]Ooh, ooh--I was so hoping there'd be a response to my baited breath...[/whisper]
Dang, tsuwm, he managed to insult us both in one rum rhyme!
my baited breath
What you fishin' for, Mizz J? <duck>
Jackie, you're getting a lot of grief. I'll send you a bucket of snowballs to fire at each of them...or keep for good memory's sake.
Have you ever heard how the people in Pierre, South Dakota, say 'Pierre'? That'll make you feel su-pierre-ior, Ms. J.
>Pierre
hey! you're talking about the capital of my birth-state! watch it!
now I'm just a few miles from Montpelier....
Ducks!
Somehow I just couldn't put "got a bite on my baited breath"--
.
'Fried Green Tomatoes' was on TV last night, and I caught the part where Iggy (Idgy?) retells the story about how there used to be a lake in that field right over there; but one November a few years back, a whole big flock of ducks came in and landed there; there was a hard freeze that night, and that lake froze so fast that all the ducks' feet were trapped. The next morning they all got to flapping their wings, and don't you know they pulled that whole lake right up, and now it's clear over in Georgia somewhere. [/free association]
baited breath..
reminds me of the story about the gal that went ice fishing..
everyone was sitting round their holes in the ice getting cold.. She was busy hauling up fish to add to the pile.
finally once fisherman slid over to her hole to learn her secret..
he asked, "Whatcha doing? What's your secret?"
she mumbled and answer...
"What?" he said...
she mumbled again..
the guy, says, "Look i appreciate your willingness to share your secret, but i can't understand a word you're saying.."
she opens her mouth, spits out a handfull of nightcrawlers, smiles and says, Warm bait!"
and that's real baited breath if you ask me!
Terrific joke, of troy! Hmmm, wonder how long it takes a vermiform friend to chill under ice?
Miss UH lane NEE.
And that's that!
...but with the boldface on the first syllable unlike tsuwm's preference for the main stress on the third. Is that what you meant by your arrow toward the first, et'?
Just my take.
sorry. the > was a shortcut quote...
I say it (!) like you do...
Let's not get prideful, fellow posters. Isn't all that we are doing here is relating how the term "Miscellany" is said and understood in our neck of the woods and not relating how it is said on TV?
Is we are having a word contest then folks around here win, because everything else being equal, their pronunciation is more melodious. Hands down.
of course there are winners, milo! its like the drew carey show.. there are winners, and winners get points.
the points are worthless, winning is worthless, but none the less, there are winners and points.
if you want lots of points, play hogwash.. when you've collected a million points, you can trade them for..um, nothing, cause they are worthless. (you'd wouldn't even impress other here if you announced that you had one a million points.. no one would care. but you can still will win and get point!)
no winners? gee's, what kind of place do you think this is?
(still, i remain pointless)
Well, there is a point at least in reading desired stress of syllables as intended. Here's a bit of verse I wrote a long time ago, and the stress on 'mis' in 'miscellany' is desirable in order to match the stress on 'sleight':
"I know a man who gathers and scatters.
He offers a miscellany of sleight of hand,
propels old doves high into the air
from his secret cages.
He folds around me tightly as a shell
while peas appear and vanish."
If the stress had been on 'cell,' I wouldn't have written the line that way.
well, of course, oftroy is right, and so is Wordwind. (hi milo.)
but the pronunciation that I linked to above won the Merriam-Webster preferred pronunciation contest. so there.
I must say, with my ear, which is according to my latest test rated at 60% distortion, I cannot discriminate between the major and minor accent (except with my still perfect reading ear).
this is how AHD marks it.
MIS-uh-LAY-nee
incidentally, the two .wav files sound like the same voice to me.
[AHD .wav file available on request, or you could use onelook to get to it. : ]
how does the group (ha!) pronounce miscellaneous?
Miscellany = Mississippi
... that really is your voice, ain't it, Mr.T?
strongest stress on LANE in miscellaneous; slight stress on mis-
miss-CELL-uh-knee
Dr. Bill and I have exchanged messages about this subject, and he presented the fact that indeed misc- is the root of the word, per Latin miscere (to mix), so it seems proper it should be emphasized. But from this root comes the Latin miscellus, for which both of the first two syllables are long (and it sounds better saying miss-KELL-us or miss-CELL-us, eh?)[.] Then those silly Latins added another suffix and created the word "miscellaneus", in which the "mis" and the "a" are emphasized (and the "a" is probably
more emphasized) - and this is the word from which we get miscellan y/eous. So I'm sure "MIS-cell-EY'-nee-us" is the more proper. Maybe misCELLanee is just a corruption.
Edit: oops, misread your post.
I say MISS-sell-LANE-e-yuss (greatest accent on "lane").
> miss uh LAY nee us
I'm close to Fong and W2 -
MIss-er-LANE-ee-us
MISS suh la NEE yusGood God yall, how do people understand you all when you speak?
Just to be sure, everyone understood my merry jab at Mizz J, yes?
my merry jab
Our amusement has not yet abaited ;)
...And you snapped it right up, I was delighted to see!
Hook, line and sinker!