Chalet, Gruyere Cheese (1801); Tordillas, Chiili (1777)

[Mark A Mandel]

On Mon, 18 Mar 2002, Laurence Horn wrote:

#I love "stomachic", which has various earlier and later cites in the
#OED (the relevant sense is #3, 'good for the stomach'), but which I'd
#never before encountered.  Apparently it's stressed (or was stressed)
#on the penult, so it doesn't sound too much like "stomach ache".

That's the rule with "-ic": the stress is on the syllable before it.

I have a small collection of exceptions to this rule:
        Arabic
        heretic
        lunatic
        turmeric
        politic
        arsenic

-- Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoepist, and
   Philological Busybody
   a.k.a. Mark A. Mandel