"precedures" and "bullets"

[Jonathan Lighter]

The context and enunciation gave no evidence of this being a speech error or slip of the tongue. Had it appeared so, I wouldn't have brought it to the attention of the list.

  Nor do the 100,000 hits on "precedure/s" suggest "speech errors."

  If, as I suggested, the word is a novel term-of-art meaning something like "preliminary procedures," well and good.

  If, however, it represents a widespread hypercorrect "spelling pronunciation" of a foolish misspelling based on a defective familiarity with the elementary English word "procedure, it is dead wrong as well as confusing. I don't see it as comparable to the use, for example, of the article "a" before a vowel, which is not a stupidism. It doesn't suggest an ignorance of basic vocabulary and has no bearing whatsoever on meaning.

  I'm sure I have uttered stupidisms of my own, but that doesn't justify their existence. Stupidisms deserve to be "gotcha'd."

  JL











"Steve Kl." <stevekl at PANIX.COM> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Steve Kl."
Subject: Re: "precedures" and "bullets"
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On Mon, 28 Aug 2006, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> The careful enunciation - along with the 100,000 hits - suggests that
> this is a term of art. But it may still be an established stupidism for
> "procedure."

To back up Page, I think it's unhelpful to call speech errors
"stupidisms".

It is extremely difficult to speak in at a conversational pace for an
extended period of time and not produce some slips of the tongue. I know
when I do radio shows, although I keep tabs on how I'm talking, I
invariably use "a" for "an" because I always get callers who say
sarcastically "I thought you were supposed to use 'an' before vowel
sounds" and then I challenge them to try to speak for half an hour without
making any mistakes whatsoever.

People like to "gotcha" linguists, but when you acknowledge that yes, you
did in fact misspeak, they're taken aback by the admission of such.

To call these slips of the tongues stupidisms, though, is needlessly
pejorative.

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