45 commonly mispronounced words (and how to say them)

Short answer: the most commonly mispronounced words in English aren't rare or long. They are everyday words that people learned from reading or picked up by ear: espresso said as "expresso", nuclear as "nucular", supposedly as "supposably". Below are 45 of them in six groups, with how people often say them, the right way to say them and the IPA. There's a printable list at the end.

Unlike the hard words to pronounce, these words aren't difficult: they're common words mispronounced out of habit, and the words people mispronounce most often are said wrong by native speakers too. The CAPITAL syllable is stressed, and the IPA is American English.

Words people add a sound to

The most common slip of all: an extra syllable or an extra letter that isn't in the word.

Words with sounds swapped or moved

Here every sound is in the word, just not in the right order. Linguists call it metathesis; it's how nuclear becomes "nucular".

Sounds people drop or change

Dictionaries now list "AR-tik", "CAN-uh-date", "GUV-er-ment" and "HY-rar-kee" as variants, so they aren't wrong, only casual. The others are still mistakes. Note that pronunciation is spelled without the "o" of pronounce, and said without it too.

Food words people pronounce wrong

Menus are where borrowed words trip everyone up. Most come from Spanish, Italian, French or Vietnamese and keep a pronunciation close to the original.

To hear them said out loud, with the American and original versions, see how to pronounce gnocchi, pho and macaron.

Place names people get wrong

British place names follow their own rules: Leicester, Gloucester and Worcester all drop the middle syllable.

Tech and borrowed words

Cachet (ka-SHAY), which means prestige, is a different word from cache, a store of hidden things or data. Two words in this group have no wrong answer: niche is NITCH or NEESH, and GIF is GIF or JIF. The GIF debate is real: the format's creator, Steve Wilhite, said "jif", while most dictionaries list both.

Why do people mispronounce words?

Most words commonly mispronounced in English go wrong for one of four reasons:

1. The word was learned from reading. You meet hierarchy or segue in a book long before anyone says it out loud, so you guess from the spelling.
2. Analogy with a similar word. Excellent and except pull et cetera toward "excetera"; mischievous gets an extra syllable by analogy with words like devious.
3. Easier sound order. "Nucular" and "asterix" are simply easier to say than the real sound sequence.
4. Borrowed words keep their own rules. Gnocchi, chipotle and genre follow Italian, Spanish and French pronunciation.

Language also moves, and sometimes the "mistake" is the older form: Arctic was spelled and said "artik" in Middle English, and the C came back from Latin only in the 17th century. If you learned English as a second language, the words that trip you up are often different ones; start with hard words to pronounce and the sound contrasts in minimal pairs.

How to stop mispronouncing a word

1. Check one dictionary with audio, American or British depending on the English you speak, and listen twice.
2. Find the stress and say the word slowly, syllable by syllable.
3. Say it in three short sentences right away, so the new version replaces the old one.
4. Catch it in your own speech. Record yourself on a call or a voice note and listen for it. To check how your English sounds overall, the free accent test takes 15 seconds.

Printable list

Download the 45 commonly mispronounced words as a PDF: all six groups with the common mistake, the right way and the IPA.

For more on how pronunciation shapes the way you sound, see the English accents hub and our guide to accent reduction.

Sources

• Oxford Learner's Dictionaries — American English pronunciations, used for the IPA on this page
• Wikipedia — Spelling pronunciation
• Wikipedia — Metathesis (linguistics)
• Wikipedia — Pronunciation of GIF