10 Words You See But Don't Hear

Pronunciation: \DESS-ul-tor-ee\ play

Desultory means "not having a plan or purpose," and it has a colorful background. A desultor was a rider trained to leap from one horse to another for performing in the Circus in ancient Rome; desultory makes the idea of hopping from one horse to another a metaphor for having no strict plan or purpose. The word is used to describe ideas or actions that are unplanned, undisciplined, or inconsistent, as in “desultory employment” or “desultory conversations.” The -sult- in desultory has the same root as -sault in somersault, from the Latin word for “leap” or “jump.”

Desultory is most commonly pronounced with stress on the first syllable, but it is also occasionally heard with stress on the second syllable: \dess-ULL-teh-ree.

Pronunciation: \in-KOH-ut\ play

Inchoate means "not completely formed or developed yet," a synonym of “formless” and “incoherent.”

This word is usually pronounced with stress on the second syllable. An alternative pronunciation has a long \A\ sound in the last syllable, \in-kuh-WATE\, but either way, the -ch- is pronounced as a hard \K\ sound and not as a \chuh\ sound as in church.

Pronunciation: \om-NIH-puh-tuhnt\ play

Omnipotent means "having complete or unlimited power."

This is a cruel case of English phonetics separating from English etymology, since if you know your word roots, you can break this word down as the Latin prefix _omni-, meaning “all,” and potent, from the Latin word meaning “powerful” or “potent.”

And yet, omnipotent is not pronounced as its two separate word parts would be if pronounced one after the other as \AHM-nee-POH-tent\; the conventional pronunciation puts the stress on the second syllable, not the first and third.

Pronunciation: \awl-BEE-ut\ play

Albeit has an old-fashioned ring to it, and with some good reason: it is made up of short words that are as old as the English language itself, all, be, and it. It means "even though" or “although” as in “She appeared on the show, albeit briefly.”

The mashing together of familiar short words into a longer one can make for some confusion when it comes to pronunciation. One could be forgiven for giving albeit a Germanic flair to rhyme with height as \all-BITE\, but for once, a word is as simple as it looks, pronounced just like all + be + it.

Pronunciation: \pree-ter-NATCH-uh-rul\ play

This is a tough one. Words that begin with the prefix pre- like pretrial or prepay or pretext are pronounced with a long \E\ sound in the first syllable. Words that begin with the letters pre- when the pre- isn’t the prefix meaning “before don’t have the long \E\, like pretzel or pretend.

So preternatural goes against the grain a bit. It means "very unusual in a way that does not seem natural" and often has a positive connotation as in “preternatural ability” or “preternatural good looks.”

But this word, perhaps unnaturally since its first three letters don’t constitute the common prefix meaning “before,” has a long \E\ in the first syllable. The variant \PRETT-ur-NATCH-uh-rul\ is much less commonly heard.

Pronunciation: \im-pruh-MAH-toor\ play

This word might look a bit odd because its English spelling is unchanged from its original Latin spelling. That can make it a tricky word to pronounce. Imprimatur means "a mark of approval or distinction," from the Latin word meaning “let it be printed.”

Even though it’s tempting to pronounce imprimatur with the stress on the second syllable, like \im-PRIM-ah-toor\, the more common pronunciation puts the stress on the third syllable, like democratic or education.

Pronunciation: \dih-BAH-kul\ play

Debacle is a word borrowed from French, and like most French borrowings since the 1700s, has retained a very French spelling—and a French-influenced pronunciation. The word means "a great disaster or complete failure," and its usual pronunciation puts the stress on the second syllable, like important or offensive.

Putting the stress on the first syllable as in \DEB-uh-kul\ is usually considered incorrect.

Pronunciation: \dye-ASP-uh-ruh\ play

Diaspora comes from the Greek word meaning “to scatter” (as in “to scatter wildflower seeds”), and has come to mean "people settled far from their ancestral homelands."

It commonly has either \dye\ or \dee\ as the first syllable with stress on the second syllable, but some people unfamiliar with this word might pronounce it with third-syllable stress, as \dye-ah-SPOR-uh.

Pronunciation: \MISS-chuh-vus\ play

Mischievous derives from mischief and means "showing a playful desire to cause trouble."

For many people, seeing all the vowels in mischievous somehow makes them add yet another, giving both one more vowel sound and one more syllable that results in the nonstandard pronunciation \miss-CHEE-vee-us. play