DEE-fense

[Arnold Zwicky]

john baker:
 >I have to admit that when I first saw this email, I was completely
 >flummoxed by it, to the point of wondering if it were a joke.  I say
 >poLICE and inSURance, but it was inconceivable to me that Tennessee
 >could be pronounced any way other than TENnessee...

well, it's known that the geographical and social distribution
of the forestressed variants is different for different words.
TENnessee seems to be widespread enough to have made it into
u.s. dictionaries, while many others haven't.

arnold