Pron. of "pathos"

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Tue Aug 14 19:30:39 UTC 2007


Merciful speed! (This is something that my mother uses in
circumstances such as these. I've never been certain of its meaning.)
I've never heard "kudo" or "kudos" spoken, so I wasn't aware of this.

Perhaps we need a law stating that, if you haven't learned the word,
its pronunciation, and its use by the time that you've graduated from
high school, you *must* consult a prescriptive grammar or an
unabridged dictionary before attempting to put that word into play in
any fashion. ;-)

-Wilson

On 8/14/07, sagehen <sagehen at westelcom.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       sagehen <sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Pron. of "pathos"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> >Perhaps he was attempting to impress by giving the word a more
> >native-Greek-like coloring, except that the "o" is omicron and not
> >omega, hence not like the "o" in "both."
> >
> >-Wilson
> >
>  Could be.  At least the short /o/  sound  for alpha in the first syllable
> wouldn't be bad.  For the rest, reminds me of  the usual rendering of
> "kudos" as  if it were the plural of / kudo/, and given a long /o/.
> AM
>
> ~@:>   ~@:>   ~@:>   ~@:>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
                                              -Sam'l Clemens

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list