Have You Had Any Misles?

A "misle" is an unofficial term for a word that you mispronounce because you've only seen it in text. The term came from the story Eric Wolfe posted in 1991 about the way he used to pronounce the word "misled." Instead of mis-led, he saw it as my-zuld. Wolfe's unconcious assumption was that the word was akin to "titled," which you would never pronounce as tit-led if you know what's good for you. The response from his Usenet group had plenty of other examples, because English is weird. Eventually, this kind of mispronunciation based on logic and other English words led to these words being called "misles."

I mispronounced the word "biopic" in my head for years until I heard someone in a YouTube video say bio-pic. I knew what it meant, but I assumed it was pronounced bi-opic. Some misles are pretty funny, like pronouncing "barfly" as barf-ly, or pronouncing "infrared" as if it rhymes with "scared." Someone even admitted to thinking the word "apply" was said like an adjective for something that's like an apple, you know, apple-y. Read about the linguistic phenomenon of misles and laugh at some common ones at Mental Floss.

(Image credit: Silar)


Newest 5
Newest 5 Comments

This reminds me of an old joke I saw as a child . . . ask someone what "r-u-s-t-y b-e-d" spells, and they'll correctly say "rusty bed." Then you say, "Ok, so what is 'r-e-s-t-y l-e-d" and people will often say "resty led" instead of "re-styled" (I put the hyphen in there for ease of reading!).
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Yep, I had the exact same thing with "misled", probably also corrected in the '90s. I imagine it's less common now with all online videos, audiobooks and podcasts supplying a lot of the information we used to get by reading.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Paradigm is another one that had me stumped when I was young. The 'g' just threw me off for some reason and I never realized it was silent. I mean, say that word without a silent 'g'... paradi-gym. Why would my brain think that was a-okay? And, even more weirdly I knew what the word meant when reading it incorrectly simply because of the context of the sentences in which it was written. I knew the word to hear it spoken correctly. It took me AGES to realize it was the same word and I had been pronouncing it wrong in my head when reading. I genuinely don't consider myself an idiot... but... there are instances of the way my brain works that really leaves me second guessing sometimes.
I surely have more. hmmm. Oh, I do indeed.
Fruition. I read it incorrectly when I was really young. Fruit-ation for some reason. Even well past knowing the correctness I still found that I read it incorrectly for years. I vividly remember saying it wrong once as an adult, immediately correcting myself, laughing it off, but internally being aghast that younger idiocy still not only lurked, but came right to the surface.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Login to comment.




Email This Post to a Friend
"Have You Had Any Misles?"

Separate multiple emails with a comma. Limit 5.

 

Success! Your email has been sent!

close window
X

This website uses cookies.

This website uses cookies to improve user experience. By using this website you consent to all cookies in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

I agree
 
Learn More