My friend Nat likes to make fun of me from time to time. Not a lot. And not unkindly. It’s just that he is amused by some things about me, like my opinion of Sting, for example. And the opinion I Once Held about Lionel Richie (no one should be held accountable for things one said when one was in the tenth grade). And the way I pronounce the word “licorice.”
“How do you pronounce ‘l-i-c-o-r-i-c-e?'” he says to me, barely able to conceal the edges of a developing grin.
And the answer is that I won’t say it for him, or for his lovely Rachel, who is egging him on because she thinks it’s funny, too. No, I won’t say it, but of course I eventually do, because I know that they love me Absolutely, and so there’s nothing to be shy about.
I say to them “LI-kor-iss,” because that is the way I say it. Yes. It’s the way I say it. It is.
I know, I know. Everyone Else says “LI-kor-ish,” except for maybe my sisters (I’ll have to ask them), because Everyone Else isn’t as much a stickler for pronunciation as I am.
This is not to say that I am correct. In fact, the most common pronunciation (which is the one given first in the collegiate edition of Merriam Webster’s dictionary) is NatandRachel’s pronunciation. “‘li-k(e-)rish” is what it says there, on page 717, where the first guide word is “library paste.”
But tonight, quite by accident, I made a discovery, and it is to the delightful accident of this discovery that we all, O Reader, owe this post. I was playing “free rice,” and the word to define was one Brand New to me. It was this: “lickerish” and it means “greedy.”
And how, one wonders, does one pronounce it? I’ll tell you. It’s pronounced Just Exactly Like Webster’s first pronounciation for the candy. So one can be, I suppose, “lickerish for licorice.”
If one were, say, Lickerish for licorice, maybe a slight change in pronunciation might be helpful, don’t you think? It might be handy, I’d imagine, for there to be some sort of distinction between these two words when one is throwing them around, right? Clarity is Oh-So-Handy when it comes to something like communication.
So go ahead, phattedcalf, and make fun of my silly little pronunciations. I don’t mind at all. You’ll never confuse my greed with the flavor of a black jelly bean.
