"Expleetive"

James Harbeck jharbeck at SYMPATICO.CA
Fri Apr 6 03:50:59 UTC 2007


That was how I said it when I was a kid. "Expleetive deleeted"
sounded pretty good to me. But then my parents corrected me (a few
times, because I didn't like the sound of the "proper" pronunication).

It's not unreasonable to think it might be pronounced that way, after
all. The "ex" is a prefix of the sort that often goes unstressed. Add
to that the fact that in the Latin the e is long. And in the OED, the
"expleetive" translation is also listed (in second spot).

Ciao,
James Harbeck.

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