[Ads-l] mic/mike (was fuck them)

Ben Zimmer bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM
Wed Aug 31 19:29:46 UTC 2016


I wrote about "mic" vs. "mike" in an "On Language" column in 2010:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/magazine/01-onlanguage-t.html

And here's a more recent piece by Arika Okrent:

http://mentalfloss.com/article/66196/microphone-mic-or-mike

On Wed, Aug 31, 2016 at 3:21 PM, Marc Sacks <msacksg at gmail.com> wrote:

> No, Amy. It's not just you. I still spell it mike, just like I did when I
> learned it back in the 50s. Though come to think of it, I never really
> learned it, just heard it pronounced mike and spelled it accordingly, just
> like a guy's name. Mick could be a guy's name too, but it's not short for
> mickrophone. so what gives?
>
> Marc Sacks
>
> On Wed, Aug 31, 2016 at 3:07 PM, Amy West <medievalist at w-sts.com> wrote:
>
> > On 8/31/16 12:00 AM, ADS-L automatic digest system wrote:
> > > Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2016 20:51:41 -0400 From: Jonathan Lighter
> > > <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM> Subject: Re: fuck them Yeah, whenever I read
> > > the pop-pedantic "mic," I still think "Mick," which must make me some
> > > kind of bigot. JL On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 8:33 PM, Laurence Horn
> > > <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> > >> >Yeah, I've run into that.  I just can't read"mic" with a "long" (i.e.
> > >> >diphthongized great-vowel-shifted) "i".  But we're a dying breed,
> > Dubya(s).
> >
> > Thank God it's not just me.
> >
>

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