Word Pronunciations I'm Looking Up
harassment
NPR's Day to Day had a story this morning about widespread harassment of women in Cairo. The reporter pronounced it HAR-as-ment, inspiring me to (finally) get around to checking this:
Webster's New World College Dictionary says you can pronounce harass with the stress on the first or second syllable, but its first choice is HAR-as. Interestingly, for the noun form, it offers only one pronounciation: HAR-as-ment.
Merriam-Webster online allows both pronunciations for the verb and both pronunciations for the noun. But for both, M-W's first choice is to put the stress on the second syllable: ha-RAS, ha-RAS-ment.
American Heritage Dictionary takes the time to include a whole usage note about disputes on how to pronounce harass:
Educated usage appears to be evenly divided on the pronunciation of harass. In our 1987 survey 50 percent of the Usage Panel preferred stressing the first syllable, while 50 percent preferred stressing the second. Curiously, the Panelists' comments appear to indicate that each side regards itself as an embattled minority.
Ironically, after all that, it offers only one pronunciation for the noun: ha-RAS-ment.
Keywords:
About June
June Casagrande was born in March and lives in a small house. She wrote a grammar/humor book called "Mortal Syntax" and, before that, one called "Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies." She sincerely hopes you buy a million copies of each.
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June, actually this is one of my minor peeves
I grew up saying "har ASS ment" because that's all I heard around me and in the movies and on radio and TV. It seems to me that coincident with the up surge of PC and the feminist think-speak movement suddenly all media began say "HAR ass ment." I recall my friends making fun imitating it. This pronunciation sounded British--a case akin to STRAW-berries and STRAW-BERRIES (American) Well, now that even prime time TV and our movies use F**k and M-f**ker, etc, why can't the rest of us return to the easier and more forceful pronunciation--"har-ASS-ment?" I promise to continue saying salesperson and firefighter.
Talk about a scathing indictment of feminists
I never heard the word at all until feminists starting protesting egregious cases of women being threatened with losing their jobs if they didn't have sex with their bosses or tolerate deliberate sexual hostility.
But if you started hearing "harass" pronounced differently around the time feminists and political correctness starting gaining prominence, then, yeah, let's be mad at them for that.
That's perfectly logical.
Tsk! Tsk! Dear June....
I'm not condoning or protesting "for" any acts defined or connoted by this "word." My peeve is that PC seemingly decided the pronunciation "her-ASS" itself when spoken thusly was itself a mild form of sexual har-ASS-ment. Changing the acceptible words we can use is bad enough, but to actually try to change the way an individual prefers to pronounce a given "acceptible" word...well, can fascism be far behind?
I know
I know you weren't condoning harassment. But your indictment of political correctness and feminism in this matter is 1. unfair and 2. unsubstantiated.
You really believe that this faceless movement deliberately sought to change our pronunciation? And you're attributing that only by saying they "seemingly decided"?
Political correctness is the movement that, in my hometown of Central Florida, taught white people that their use of the N-word was insensitive. Feminism is the movement that finally tried to do something about harassment and some other serious horrors.
If, indeed, these causes deliberately tried to change our pronunciation, that was wrong of them. But I doubt it. And it bothers me that these two movements have become all-occasion whipping boys. Even if they did wrong, they did good stuff, too.
Pronunciation
June,
One would think the traditional accent pattern in the verb form "harass" would settle the issue decidedly on the side of second syllable, as M-W indicates is the preferred usage. Of course, in descriptive usage (rather than prescriptive), popular usage could override traditional patterns. At this point, a linguistic snob would intervene and say, "I don't care what the masses do, because I'm an expert in English and don't follow "populist" trends. [For extended analysis, see my blog, "Linguistics: Snobs vs. Modernists"]
Brenden
Pronunciation
June,
One would think the traditional accent pattern in the verb form "harass" would settle the issue decidedly on the side of second syllable, as M-W indicates is the preferred usage. Of course, in descriptive usage (rather than prescriptive), popular usage could override traditional patterns. At this point, a linguistic snob would intervene and say, "I don't care what the masses do, because I'm an expert in English and don't follow 'populist' trends." [For extended analysis, see my blog, "Linguistics: Snobs vs. Modernists"]
Brenden