See, I have this wonderful library in my office of books of quotations, dictionaries, grammar books and style books, plus lexicographies, etymologies, not to mention sources and provenances plus special interests. So when I was putting back my Dictionary of Newfoundland English the other night my eye fell on “the big book of beastly mispronunciations” by Charles Harrington Esler (Houghton Mifflin, 1999), given me several years ago by an admirer. (Men didn’t give me jewellery, they gave me books, more precious than gold.)

I hadn’t read this one for some time - well, you know, you never finish reading a book like that; you dip and browse. So I perched and read and read, on and on, till another hour or so went by and I was late to bed. Fun, though. So I’ll pass on a few words to you, some pet peeves and some corroboration of my choices.

Number one, for example, is basil, pronounced bazil not baysil. Misguided Americans, including my U.S.-based daughter now, have succeeded in spreading the use of the mispronunciation, but I’ll stick to British tradition. So with cumin, as in comin’ through the rye, not koomin. My favourite peeve is forte (strength), a losing battle. Everyone says for-tay. Wrong,wrong, wrong, but I give up. (It’s like lie and lay, a lost cause.)

I once quit dating a boy because he corrected me incorrectly. I had said something was stultifying and he dared to tell me the word was stuLLifying! I withdrew a piece from a magazine when I was trying to make a (meagre) living as a journalist because the editor put wrong words into my copy - and also changed my slant.

You must have some words you love to hate if they’re mispronounced, like nucular or restauranteur. There’s another one like that, with an added or misplaced letter, but I can’t think of it right now. Someone will tell me.

This book doesn’t offer turmeric or inveigle, but it does have bi-ZAN-tin (Esler’s and my choice) not the commoner BIZ-in-teen. I love kun-SOR-shee-um, not kun-SOR-tee-um.

Which makes me think of the pronunciation of ghoti. Fish.

You know that one, don’t you?

First of all, I found out you mustn’t say Newfie; it’s an insult (like calling an Icelander a “ghoulie”).

Second, I couldn’t find my little alphabet book. I checked the words on my list against the dictionary and some of them aren’t in it. It was published in 1945’; perhaps some of the words I found are newer or more colloquial? Like fooster. According to my little list, it means to cook up a meal. Couldn’t find it. And ruckshin, supposed to mean argument or disagreement - not in the dictionary. Neither is thunder mug, but we all know what that means.

On the other hand, I found a lovely word with an interesting history fully explained in the Nfld book. “Gulch”, a verb, means to frequent a sheltered hollow for sexual intimacy. The note reads as follows; "[GULCH] has come, on the Labrador coast, to have a meaning peculiar to that region and those who frequent it. In summer, men, women, and children from Newfoundland spend some weeks there at the fishing, living in a very promiscuous way. As there is no tree for shelter for hundreds of miles of islands and shores, parties resort to the hollows for secret indulgence. Hence gulching has, among them, become a synonym for living a wanton life….Sunday afternoons were good gulching days.” My little list defined it as “making out in a crevasse.” I like gulching, the verb not necessarily the activity. I have a fading memory.

Here are a few more from my little list, corroborated by the dictionary:

squish or asquish: uneven, askew

ballycattered: coated with ice

sparble: nail in a shoe (a short nail, worked out of the shoe into the foot, not pleasant, or a stud(s) on the outside of the shoe to help prevent sliding on ice)

cocksiddle: tripping, tumbling over (somersaults)

I stayed up past my bedtime, whenever that is, reading and browsing some more in this delightful book.I could go on and on.

Anon, anon.