behemothic

[Mark Mandel]

That's how I automatically pronounced it, too. Greco-Latin suffix "-ic"
always puts stress on the preceding syllable.*

Mark Mandel

* Except when it doesn't. The only counterexample I can come up with at the
moment is "arithmetic" as a noun (not adj.)

On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 10:26 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

> At 1/15/2009 08:06 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
> >At 6:03 PM -0500 1/15/09, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >>Not in OED:
> >>
> >>2008 _Top 10 Intelligent Design Myths_ [
> >>http://www.livescience.com/history/top10_intelligent_designs-1.html] :
> When
> >>the cold of Niflheim touched the fires of Muspell, the giant Ymir and a
> >>behemothic cow, Auehumla, emerged from the thaw.
> >>
> >>JL
> >
> >An adjective I can imagine writing, but not pronouncing.  [b@'him at Ik]
> >with stress on "he"?  [bih@'mOTIk] or [bih@'maTIk] with secondary on
> >the "be" and primary on the "moth"?  Or maybe rhyming with "gothic"?
> >All totally impossible.
>
> No -- stress on the first and third syllables:  BE him OTH ic (and
> does rhyme with Gothic).
>
> Is this the cow that draws the Juggernaut?
>
> Joel
>

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