"fission" with -zh-?

[Victor Steinbok]

"Recission" has been in the news a lot over the past year and a half,
for obvious reasons, and I am yet to hear it with anything but a -zh- in
the middle.

     VS-)

On 3/15/2011 7:45 PM, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
> On 3/15/2011 3:11 PM, geoffrey nunberg wrote:
>> Listening to some nuclear energy experts talking about Japan on the radio this morning, I was led to wonder whether  "fission" is the only English word in which orthographic [Vssion] can be pronounced with a voiced fricative.
> --
>
> It's not.
>
> MW3 shows "fission", "scission", "abscission", "rescission" with both
> "-sh" and "-zh-" pronunciations. I guess some of these are in line with
> the usual pronunciation of "scissors".
>
> Going back to the good old days, the on-line Century dictionary shows
> _only_ "-sh-" pronunciations for "fission" and "scission", but _only_
> "-zh-" pronunciations for "abscission", "rescission" (!).
>
> In between, MW2 shows both for "scission", only "-zh-" for "abscission",
> "rescission", only "-sh-" for "fission".
>
> These data would be compatible with "abscission" and "rescission"
> leading "scission" astray with "fission" following later (I'm not
> asserting this must have happened). These are not all everyday words and
> I suppose a century ago "fission" may have been as esoteric as
> "scission"or nearly so.
>
> Why the "-z-" sound in "scissor", BTW?
>
> -- Doug Wilson

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