From the Travelers Recond April 1889

[Benjamin Zimmer]

And soon enough, jokes started circulating about how v[ahz]es were
more expensive than v[eys]es...

-----
(Frederick, Md.) News, Jan. 6, 1894, p. 4
>From the New York Sun.
The later authorities in words have come to the rescue of the public. They
say that a straightforward English pronunciation of the word vase is
sufficient and desirable. In such a case it rhymes with case or base. In
certain circles the object becomes a vaze: if it is a peachblow it is a
vahze; and if it is in Boston it is a vawz. The new dictionary makers have
smashed one annoying affectation of language.
-----
Stevens Point (Wisc.) Daily Journal, Aug. 21, 1907, p. 3
Somebody says that the difference between a vase and a "vahze" is that the
latter costs more than $2.50. But a "vahze" that costs five dollars or six
dollars is now called an amphora, and both the vahze and the amphora were
never intended for use but to be placed on stands or in niches, as
evidence that their owner has money to burn.
-----

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On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 5:45 PM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> VASE OR VAWZE?
> The poets give no encouragement to people who pronounce vase as though
> it were written " vaze" or "vauz." Thus Pope [as good authority as any
> dictionary] : —
> " There heroes' wits are kept in ponderous vases, And beaux' in
> snuff-boxes and tweezer-cases."
> Byron [anxiously accurate in rhyming pronunciations, and an authority of
> the' first rank in such questions] supports Pope in these lines: —
> " A pure, transparent, pale, yet radiant face,
> Like to a lighted alabaster vase."
>
> Moore, who was a very dainty gentleman, and associated much with the
> arbiters of fashion, has the following : —
> " Grave me a cup with brilliant grace,
> Deep as the rich and holy vase—"
>
> Keats adds the weight of his authority: —
> " Fair, dewy roses brush against our faces, And flowering laurels spring
> from diamond vases."
> Notwithstanding these and many other examples in the poets, fashionable
> people in England universally give the word a broad pronunciation, not
> quite "vauz" and not quite "vaze," but something between. Which shall we
> obey, Parnassus or Belgravia? Parnassus, of course.— [Youth's Companion.
> [Our only recollection of a literary authority for "vavvze" is Sotheby,
> a mediocre but fashionable contemporary of Byron, who rhymes it with
> "gauze," showing that this pronunciation was used by a minority of good
> society at that time. Its growth in favor since then seems due to its
> patent absurdity and anomalousness, which is reason enough always. — Ed.
> Record.]
>

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