misdemeanant

[Laurence Horn]

Wonder if when it's pronounced in a courtroom setting it gets secondary stress on the last syllable, the way "defendant" does on the "(d)ant", as we've discussed in prior threads.  (I would pronounce both with essentially no stress and a schwa, but it's definitely pronounced with an aesh, in the latter case at least.  Of course "misdemeanant" would come up a lot less in court than "defendant".

LH

On Apr 1, 2012, at 11:58 AM, Arnold Zwicky wrote:

> came across this useful counterpart to "felon" a little while ago ("felon" : "felony" = "misdemeanant" :  "misdemeanor").  new to me, but far from new: as 'a person convicted of a misdemeanor or guilty of misconduct', it's in NOAD2; AHD5 has a similar entry, and OED3 (June 2002) has cites going back to 1819 (and marks the word as "now chiefly U.S."). OED3 also has an etymology tracing the noun back to a verb "misdemean" 'to misbehave, misconduct oneself' (with cites from the 16th century and the label "now rare").
>
> arnold
>
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