Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Say What?

I was composing an e-mail this morning, and used Thesaurus.com to find a synonym for "goodness". All the normal words were represented, such as benevolence, integrity, and kindheartedness. However, in the list of Related Words, I saw this:

eellogofusciouhipoppokunurious

What the heck did it mean? I had to know. Interestingly enough, Dictionary.com the companion site to the thesaurus, didn't have any results for the word. According to Answers.com, it is an obscure word that means good. I guess since it describes something, it would be an adjective

But how is the word pronounced? I turned to Google to find the answer. Usually I get thousands of search results, but this time I only got 21, and none of them had the information I was looking for. Since Google was no help, I was forced to fall back on the rules of of syllabication and pronunciation I learned way back when.

Based on that logic, I think you'd say:
  • eel (Like the fish)
  • logo (Something that would be on the chest of your shirt)
  • fus (I think this would be pronounced like "fuss", because in a closed syllable--when a vowel is followed by one or more consonants--the vowel is usually short)
  • ciou (Could be an "sh" sound, like in the word delicious)
  • hi (Like the greeting. This is an example of an open syllable, a single vowel at the end of a syllable; it usually has a long sound. )
  • pop (What some people call Coke)
  • po (Long o sound-another open syllable)
  • kun (A short u sound, rhyming with "run")
  • urious ("curious" without the "c")
However, we all know that English isn't always a logical language. If you're a pro at this type of thing, please leave me a comment and let me know how I did.

5 comments:

  1. I'm English and I don't have a clue...lol

    Kathy, you have an award back at random jottings... please accept with my thanks

    xx

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  2. I have to agree that you should get an award for randomness. You are now about the 4th result on Google for eellogofusciouhipoppokunurious pronunciation. Maybe if we figured out how to pronounce it correctly this page could be the definitive guide for people who are wondering (you've already made a good start).

    Also, I copied the word into the ATT Pronunciation Research Site and it sounded pretty funny. It did better than I thought it would, though.

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  3. Jackie-I don't think I could say it even once!

    Brian-that pronunciation research site is pretty cool. I'll have to add it to my list of things to play with.

    ReplyDelete