From Slashdot

Thu Jul 19 19:26:46 UTC 2007

On Jul 19, 2007, at 12:11 PM, Wilson Gray wrote on the stressing in
"formidable" and "exquisite".

i might have posted on this before, but Alfred Ayres's The Orthoepist
(which i have in its 12th edition, of 1882) insists on first-syllable
stress in both words.  of course, they got into his book only because
a significant number of people were stressing the middle syllable.
way back then.

arnold

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