Susie Dent on mispronunciations

Mispronouncing a word may be embarrassing, but it can also raise a laugh. Our lexicographer shares a few of her favourite slip-ups.

Waist up photo of Susie Dent wearing a white blouse

By Susie Dent | Published - 25 Feb 2026

Beyond the chance to read the dictionary all day, the very best thing about my job is the conversations I have with people who love words as much as I do. In my theatre show, Word Perfect, I have a segment that I like to call my "word surgery", in which the audience has an opportunity to ask me whatever they please.

Their questions have ranged from, "One of my closest friends consistently misuses the apostrophe. Should I cut him off?" to "I can be overwhelmed and I can be underwhelmed, but can’t I just be 'whelmed'?"

The answer to the latter is yes, you can, although ‘whelmed’ simply means ‘capsized’, and so the ‘over’ is really just upping the ante. It’s a great talking point, but not quite as good as one I was posed at a literary event last year, when a lovely woman recounted a recent exchange in her family.

"My daughter told me off the other day," she said. "I told her I’d just had 'an epiphany' about something. She snorted, gave me a huge eyeroll and spluttered, 'Muuuuum! You mean an epi-fanny!'" How we laughed. But aren’t we all guilty of mispronouncing a word that we’ve only ever seen written down?

I know I am. I was convinced for too long that ‘oxymoron’ couldn’t possibly sound so, well, moronic, and so I gave it an elegant glide that produced something like ‘oximeruhn’. My classmates, meanwhile, decided that a piece of crockery was hidden within ‘hyperbole’, reading it as ‘hyper-bowl’.

As for ‘epitome’, doesn’t a large book come into it somewhere? This mispronunciation minefield is so vast that there is even a name for the specific misreadings that arise when a hyphen drops out of a word. Think ‘codeveloper’ or ‘coworker’, words that seem to introduce fish and cattle into the equation; or ‘awry’, which can take on a Scottish lilt with ‘aw-ree’.

Three older women sit around a table at an outdoor cafe laughing — Getty

‘Goatherd’ makes you wonder what a ‘goath’ is, while ‘underfed’ might leave you asking whether you can be ‘derfed’ to begin with. Linguists know these as ‘misles’, a term based on the reading of ‘misled’ as the past tense of a mysterious verb to ‘misle’.

When I asked for examples on social media, the response was joyful. Some shared their mortification at pronouncing ‘picturesque’ as ‘picture-skew’, while others admitted they had always read Penelope as ‘Penny-lope’.

Others remembered an unfortunate version of ‘mishit’, picking ‘jod-hoppers’ over ‘jodphurs’, ‘paradiggum’ over ‘paradigm’, and, surely one of the best, ‘I Die Oh Sign Crazy’ for ‘idiosyncrasy’. Who can really blame them?

Navigating menus can be hazardous, too. One of my followers asked his companion what ‘whore d’ovaries’ they were having as a starter, while another’s son still regrets requesting a ‘quickie lorraine’ from a waiter.

Personally, I always trip up over ‘sundried’ tomatoes. (If you’ll allow me a silly aside, I will never not delight in the lady who always offered her guests "a slice of vendetta" from the freezer.)

Another correspondent shared a chat overheard outside a maternity hospital as two new grannies compared their grandchildren’s names. "And what did they decide to call yours?" one asked. "Ivanee!", the other replied. "Oh, that’s lovely, and quite unusual," her companion commented. "How do you spell it?" "Y.V.O.N.N.E," came the response.

It goes without saying that we are all in this together. Everyone comes unstuck sometimes, and our laughter is very much ‘with’ rather than ‘at’ our fellow stumblers. In fact, conversations like these can inspire much-needed laughter on even the dreichest days. So bring on the misles and let’s have some fun. And if you’d like to share your own, I’d be delighted to hear them.

(Hero image credit: Michael Leckie)