How to Pronounce the Word Height

You are very correct, although I don’t believe I have never heard it pronounced the way you apparently have. Is that something you hear people say often?

AMEN!! My supervisor at my last job used to say “pecifically” instead of “specifically.” This wasn’t just once in a while; it was all of the time! It made him sound like a complete moron. The scary thing is that he has a B.A. in Education — he could be teaching people to say that word like that.

A VP in a company I used to work for pronounced “else” as “elks”. It was hard not to laugh.

I have a friend who thinks I say Wisconsen the wrong way. I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. As i turns out, I said it to “fast”. He said there should be an inperceptably small pause between Wis and Consen. I’ve gone bake to saying it my usual way instead of Wis-consen, because, it turns out that my friend is a dumb **** .

I just happened to land on 2 pages of your web site today. The first was your discussion of how to pronounce the name Gagne. The second was your comments concerning the pronounciation of the word height. You contend that anyone who says height “incorrectly” is ignorant and sounds like an idiot. However you apparently don’t even say your own last name correctly…. hmm….. I would suggest that it is just as valid for me and my family to pronounce height the way we choose as it is for you and your family to pronounce Gagne way you choose.

Very interesting discussion. I notice that dictionaries seem to allow, or at least show, such pronunciations as (1) “fith” instead of “fifth” (most Americans in fact do say “fith” instead of fifth; they even say “sikth” instead of “sixth”) (2) “nucular” instead of “nuclear” (Eisenhower used to say it that way until somebody corrected him; Bush, Harrison Ford, and many officers in the military pronounce it that way). Dictionaries however do not show (3) “height” pronounced with a “th” ending (high-th) but I hear it pronounced that way often. Whether “fith,” “nucular,” “high-th,” “acrosst,” “asterix” (instead of asterisk), “aks” instead of “ask” are right or wrong, the truth is that millions of Americans, many of them intelligent, pronounce them that way and there is very little that can be done about it. Other examples of lost causes are (1) “If I would have knew, I would have went” for “If I had known, I would have gone” or (2) “I would have ate it” instead of “I would have eaten it.” “I would have ran, instead of I would have run.” The reason for these mistakes may be that they involve irregular verbs (to run, to go, to eat) in which the simple past and past participles are different (I ran, I would have run; I ate, I would have eaten; I went, I would have gone; I chose/froze, I would have chosen/frozen). They don’t have a problem with regular verbs in which both forms are the same (I started, I would have started, I closed, I would have closed; I opened, I would have opened) and they think the same applies to irregular verbs.
I apologize for this overly technical post.

Oscar

I cringe every time I hear these words but when I look up across at the Webster’s online dictionary, it shows that acrosst is “allowable” as seen here:

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=across

As well as allowing heighth:

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=height&x=0&y=0

I never heard them until about 12 years ago here in California and since then I have been vexed by them daily.

As long as they exist in the dictionary, we are all doomed!

People who say “hythe” may also believe “altitude” and “attitude” are homophones.

The heighth thing drives me crazy too….I guess people hear the words, length, width, and depth, and perhaps assume that heighth is correct.

Some of my pet peeves are “irregardless”, “lay” (as in “I’m going to lay down for a nap”), and “I could care less”, instead of “I couldn’t care less”.

THANK YOU! I live in Colorado and work in the landscape industry and all I ever here is “height” pronounced “hythe” it drives me crazy!

Solder is pronounced “sodder”, according to my Funk and Wagnalls, just as the “l” is silent in the word Lincoln. Down here in the south people drive me crazy with “pacific” instead of specific, “welp” instead of welt, and “perifeal” instead of peripheral. I’ve found that enen if you bring to light the correct pronunciation, they don’t care!
It’s the way they’ve been taught, the way they’ve said it all their lives, and it’s the way they’ll say it till they die!

Actually, if you check a dictionary, either pronunciation is correct. They pronunciation which you claim is incorrect is actually the Old English pronunciation from which today’s more common way of saying it was derived.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/height

Ryan, if it’s correct why does saying it make you sound like a tard?

Height rhymes with kite…however, as the word “heighth” has the same meaning, exists in literature, but is mostly archaic (no longer in use):

“Until the end of the seventeenth century, highth or heighth were its standard spellings. The word was formed in Old English from high, plus -th, the exact analogue of width, breadth, and length. If word history were the only consideration, we all ought still to be using highth.

The reason why we don’t comes down to dialect pronunciation in parts of Northern England in Middle English times, in which the -th ending was pronounced as /t/. In Southern England, it was said instead like the initial th in thumb. During the seventeenth century, the Northern form triumphed over the Southern, and the spelling followed suit. (Width and length didn’t follow because final dt is not a common consonant cluster in English and is hard to say.)

However, heighth continued to be widely heard. Charles Dickens used it frequently — as here in Great Expectations: “Pip, I wish you ever well and ever prospering to a greater and a greater heighth”. It still exists in several English dialects down to the present day. It has also survived in parts of North America, which have tended to cling to older pronunciations.

Because of its odd history, we can hardly argue that highth is truly an error, more an archaism. Though nearly everyone now spells it height, it’s not that uncommon to hear it said as “heighth” among educated people in North America, and some authorities there consider it to be a permissible variant.”

on*

LOL. That was extremely entertaining and TRUE. Thanks!

I noticed no one mentioned the words nuclear (nu-cue-ler), Washington (Warshington) and measure (mayzhur). Ugh – besides heighth, those words pronounced that way drive me nuts!

THANK YOU! I mentioned this to a friend the other day and she didn’t know what I was talking about. Luckily, she has never been on the receiving end of this proninciation abomination. When I have heard it, and I have heard it a lot over e years, I always look around to see if anyone else heard. I’m always alone so I’ve begun thinking I am imagining things – sort of like seeing Big Foot. It is horrible, wrong, and confusing. How do you get that pronunciation from those letters in that order?

Strangely, I have only ever heard Americans say it “hythe” – that is not to say there isn’t a wealth of mispronunciations world wide, I myself find it hard to get out of the habit of always pronouncing words that begin with “pro” the way you would pronounce the slang “pro”, i.e. prostitute or professional. I just can’t understand how people get “hythe” out of “height”.