2022-05-11
25 分钟There are no words in either French or English that begin with S except for etc. Inexplicable and unexplainable both have Latin roots and they still occupy the same lexical space.
Coming up on Word Matters,
spellings that reflect alternative pronunciations and the unexplainable favoritism that is shown to inexplicable.
I'm Emily Brewster and Word Matters is produced by Merriam-Webster in collaboration with New England Public Media.
On each episode, Merriam-Webster editors Amon Shea, Peter Sokolowski,
and I explore some aspect of the English language, from the dictionary's vantage point.
A listener question about E-C-T as used for the abbreviated form of etc., or rather,
a version of that Latin phrase pronounced as x-cetera,
raises questions about other alternative spellings that develop to reflect non-standard pronunciations.
I'll start our discussion off.
Listener Michael wrote in response to our segment on abbreviations, saying,
I listened to this episode hoping all along that you would address E-T-C, the abbreviation for etc.,
with so many people pronouncing it ec-cetera these days,
along with other words such as especially, the abbreviation has started to morph toward E-C-T.
I see it all the time now.
You could have killed two birds with one stone by correcting the pronunciation along with the spelling of the abbreviation.
So...
What of that spelling and pronunciation of the abbreviated form of etc?
Well, Michael may be both heartened and disappointed.
We don't include ECT as a spelling of the abbreviation in our dictionaries,