When I was in elementary school, one of my classmates pronounced it "thermo meter" and I had to watch the science teacher struggle for a good 30 seconds to decide if he was going to correct him or not.
this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2024
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For anyone confused.
Most other languages do call it a thermo meter or similar. People who are not native English speakers will pronounce it wrongly when speaking English, because the word is the same - it's just pronounced weirdly in both British and American English. The British and American pronunciations are not exactly the same on this, but they're both ~~wrong~~ different from any other languages, except Greek.
The English pronunciation is caused by English inheriting the Greek way of stressing the third last syllable on words of Greek origin. It makes no sense in my mind why they do it on compound words though. Meter is not Greek. It's English, so they could've chosen differently, but they obviously chose the most annoying way to pronounce it.
There's a few other words like that, but I don't remember which..
I think we should start pronouncing molecules or particles like Hercules, just to be consistent
Now you're just wrecking my mind.
Just as long they don't wreck your testicles.
I think we can agree on that one.
In any of the languages that I know the pronunciation of, there are no differences in the pronunciation of deez nutz.
Hah. That reminds me of a joke I used to play on my wife back when cars had cd players. After we got in the car, about once a month I would come up with
"Hey can you go and get that CD for the ride?"
"What CD?"
"See Deez Nutz."
Ha. Thanks. I'll use that on my family today .
Mole-cue-leez?
Thermo meter Thermometer
Me: They are the same picture
Seriously though i did not understand which one I am pronouncing. I would usually read thermo meter and thermometer the same. When I try to differentiate by trying to make it sound together, or by trying to make more detatched, i just can't and end up pronouncing the same
Ok. In English it's pronounced third-MOM-meet-her.
Thanks I guess i'll stick to thermo meter lol
Pedometer is the first one that comes to mind for me.
I don't even want to know how that's pronounced correctly. It's obviously two words. Foot and meter. Wtf is a Dom?
Circumference is pretty bad too.
I think it's the same as ther-MOM-iter. Pe-DOM-iter
Haha thanks! I was totally lost xD
Meter is not Greek.
Do you mean its pronunciation is not Greek?
Both thermo and meter are from Greek, but the combination didn't exist until the 17th century
What you wrote before is confusing then.
I like to do that with a lot of the o'meters, just for fun.
Acceler-o-meter and seis-o-meter are my favorite. Weirdly least fun: kil-o-meter.
Pedometer is my favorite of these. How many pedo's ya get in today?
Isn’t it usually the other way around? Pedos getting in…. You know what, never mind.
and what the teacher did?
Corrected him. lol.
Hmmm, he says, reveling in his pedantry: Speedometers actually measure net displacement, and since thermal energy causes collisions on the small scale, but results in very little net movement for the particles, its not quite like a speedometer.
I like to think of it as a ball pit with one of those super bounce ball stacks in it.
Wouldn't it be speed and crowding simultaneously?
Also, where would infrared photons fit in this scenario?
By that logic:
Officer, I couldn't have been speeding, the average speed of all the cars was below the speed limit!
Ok, T'pol