Red vs. Reed - The Great "Read Receipt" Divide
October 31, 2016 10:08 AM   Subscribe

Kelly Conaboy of The Hairpin got freaked out at a podcast host pronouncing the first word in "read receipts" as reed rather than red. A Slack poll, a party conversation, and a Google dive later, Conaboy ties the pronunciation to Tim Cook firing Scott Forstall.
posted by Etrigan (75 comments total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
I've always pronounced it reed, and I've just now realized that not only is there Another Way, but that my way doesn't make sense!

Except for the alliteration. That's fun.


Reed receipts.

Reeeeeeed receipts.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 10:14 AM on October 31, 2016 [19 favorites]


Clearly it needs to be a reed receipt because it's a receipt that's generated when someone reads it.

It can't be a red receipt, because then there's ambiguity over whether it's a receipt for something having been read or whether it is receipt that has itself has been read.
posted by Zalzidrax at 10:18 AM on October 31, 2016 [30 favorites]


People need to loosen up. It's English and both pronunciations are correct in a given context, get over yourself.
posted by doctor_negative at 10:19 AM on October 31, 2016 [12 favorites]


see I always pronounced "read receipts" as "of course I will not tell you when I opened your email, you fascist, privacy-despising, peek-into-everybody's-underwear-drawer stooges, so stop trying to make me"
posted by koeselitz at 10:19 AM on October 31, 2016 [32 favorites]


I've never read or heard this phrase before now. Apparently it has to do with being able to tell if someone reads your email.
posted by octothorpe at 10:21 AM on October 31, 2016 [3 favorites]


How is it pronounced if the feature is turned off?
posted by AugustWest at 10:22 AM on October 31, 2016 [6 favorites]


The dress is clearly red and gold, not reed and blue.

And it's Bill Murray wearing it, not Tom Hanks.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:22 AM on October 31, 2016 [4 favorites]


Read* receipts, fellow MeFites**, that's where I'm a viking***.

*reed
**me-fights
*** metaphorical
posted by bondcliff at 10:26 AM on October 31, 2016 [16 favorites]


It's "reed" receipt because you pair the present tense of a verb with the word "receipt."

Your rocket got launched? You'd get a "launch receipt."

Your rocket crashed and needed a repair? You'd get a "repair receipt."

The past tense "red" receipt doesn't follow normal English grammar constructions. AND it lacks assonance.
posted by explosion at 10:28 AM on October 31, 2016 [58 favorites]


Reeeeeeed receipts.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug


So, do you pronounce your username "in-sayd" or "in-sed"?
posted by TedW at 10:30 AM on October 31, 2016 [3 favorites]




"Reid receipts" would be visually more pleasant. i before e and all that, except after c and in the name Reid.
posted by chavenet at 10:34 AM on October 31, 2016



To expand on what explosion said above, the "read receipts" older brother is the "delivery receipt" not the "delivered receipt".
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 10:34 AM on October 31, 2016 [8 favorites]


posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug
So, do you pronounce your username "in-sayd" or "in-sed"?


Wait, but isn't it "en-" and not "in-"?

How do we humans even communicate.
posted by Room 641-A at 10:36 AM on October 31, 2016 [2 favorites]


I started listening to a podcast recently where the host and all the guests pronounced "subsequent" as "subSEEquent" and I started wondering if I'd slipped into an alternate reality. First thing I did was look for a Berenstain Bears book
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:38 AM on October 31, 2016 [7 favorites]


IMPORTANCE: HIGH
posted by thelonius at 10:44 AM on October 31, 2016 [11 favorites]


In what context is this a thing?
posted by mississippi at 10:53 AM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


Can we talk about how Americans pluralize 'process' as 'praw-ce-ceez'? Is that to sound fancy or something?
posted by Space Coyote at 10:53 AM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


You're gonna have to be more specific about which American accent you're referring to. I live in the Northeast, and say "prah-ce-sizz." The plural of "prah-cess." First syllable is never "praw," but also never "pro."
posted by explosion at 11:00 AM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


I pronounce GIF with a hard 'G'

because I am a Hard G.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 11:00 AM on October 31, 2016 [14 favorites]


Metafilter: It's English and both pronunciations are correct in a given context, get over yourself.
posted by Freelance Demiurge at 11:11 AM on October 31, 2016 [3 favorites]


Purchase receipt, deposit receipt, repair receipt...all present tense.
Why would read receipt be any different?
posted by rocket88 at 11:18 AM on October 31, 2016 [4 favorites]


Oh, I say "reed receipt" mostly because the start of both the words then have similar sounds :)
posted by raccoon409 at 11:20 AM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


It's pronounced "reed receipt" because it's actually written Read-Receipt and the other disposition notification is Return-Receipt not Returned-Receipt. Therefore "read" is in the present tense and it's not weird like who would ever pronounce "red receipt" oh my god.
posted by graymouser at 11:21 AM on October 31, 2016 [12 favorites]


I say "red receipt" because I'm getting this thing because I couldn't trust the pig-molester to read the email I sent him, so I had to attach that goddamn receipt so I know he actually looked at it, even through I marked it as important and put a must-be-done-by on it, and so this is the only way I can know that it was actually read (pronounced "red").

It's that or go to his office, open it, and hold his eyes open as he reads it out loud.
posted by mephron at 11:31 AM on October 31, 2016 [2 favorites]


relevant askme!
posted by phunniemee at 12:22 PM on October 31, 2016


On "processes" by (obviously) our own Chapeau De Language.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 12:26 PM on October 31, 2016 [2 favorites]


See also, FAQ.
posted by mudpuppie at 12:30 PM on October 31, 2016


rum-soaked space hobod space hobo: I am a Hard G

Is that a hard G as in a G pronounced against the hard palette, as in gem, as opposed to a soft G pronounced against the soft palette, as in gum? Or do you think gem has a softer sound than gum?

*hides*
posted by merlynkline at 12:42 PM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


The way Canadian people pronounce "process" is gonna blow some fucking minds.
posted by ethansr at 12:43 PM on October 31, 2016 [2 favorites]


The receipt is sent out when the email is opened, not when it's being closed after it was read.
posted by I-baLL at 1:11 PM on October 31, 2016


I haven't thought about email read receipts in a long time (because they're very annoying and totally unstandardized), but they're a very common thing in messaging, for example in iMessage, where you can turn them off, and Facebook Messenger, where you can't turn them off.
posted by zsazsa at 1:18 PM on October 31, 2016


I feel like I got tricked into reading that Tim Cook interview, I gave up pretty far into it but there was nothing about read (reed) receipts.
posted by bleep at 1:25 PM on October 31, 2016 [2 favorites]


In all this pronunciation turmoil I am sure we can all agree that people saying "Reesie's Pieces" are flat-out wrong.
posted by Spatch at 1:28 PM on October 31, 2016 [6 favorites]


Almost 20 years in the corporate world and I've never heard anybody say "red" receipt.

Also, I set my email client to NEVER send a read receipt.
posted by LoveHam at 1:28 PM on October 31, 2016


What on earth is the context for this? Where would I encounter the phrase "read receipts"?
posted by lkc at 1:31 PM on October 31, 2016


Outlook has a setting called "Send read receipts". I thought it was a great feature because it eliminates that awkward moment when you have to ask someone if they saw your email and they sheepishly shrug and go "No, I haven't read any emails in weeks." Which is a thing that people manage to get away with somehow. Unfortunately it doesn't seem that Gmail for business offers them which is too bad.
posted by bleep at 1:41 PM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


He Is Only The Imposter: “To expand on what explosion said above, the 'read receipts' older brother is the ‘delivery receipt’ not the ‘delivered receipt’.”

okay I swore I wouldn't get involved in this, but:

The problem with suggesting this is an analogue of "delivery receipt" (or "launch receipt," or "repair receipt") is that all of those are nouns in this context, not verbs. Yes, "launch" and "repair" can be verbs, but in this context what you mean is you got a "receipt for the repair" or a "receipt for the launch" or a "receipt for the delivery." They're all nouns signifying the act being notarized, as it were, not verbs. "Delivery receipt" makes this plain; "delivery" is not a verb at all, it's only a noun.

Now, "read" can be a noun. It's a weird noun, though, and relatively colloquial. You sometimes say "I need to get a read on him," maybe, or "this book is worth a read." But I feel like that's not what's happening with the term "read receipt."

Are you actually referring to a "receipt for the read"? Because if you're not, then "read receipt" is not analogous to "delivery receipt" or "launch receipt" or "repair receipt."

The other trouble, of course, is that "read receipt" doesn't seem analogous to those other possibilities anyway. I think it's just one of those odd neologisms invented by computer people which doesn't seem to follow any prior form. As far as I can tell, it's a a notation to the original party sent to indicate the inbox status of an email. That is – it's a receipt which notifies you when an email's inbox status switches to read.

It's "red receipt," not "reed receipt." At least, I'm confident that's how the people who invented it pronounced it to themselves, since they were concerned with the actual status of the email in the inbox ("read" or "unread") and not with some nebulous verbal concept "to read" or abstract noun "the read." But people can pronounce words however they feel like it; that's how words work.

explosion: “The past tense 'red' receipt doesn't follow normal English grammar constructions. AND it lacks assonance.”

This is probably just personal, but REEE DREEE SEEET is basically the least sonorous combination I can think of at this moment. I can't think of any double-long-E words that are euphonious to me (petri, feces, seamy, greedy, wheedly, beady, mealy...) and I can't think of any triple-long-E words or phrases at all. I guess when you pronounce "CDC," that's one? The "EE-EE-EE" of "reed receipt" is sing-songy enough to evoke awkward childhood rhymes.

But again, that's just me. Probably other people feel differently.
posted by koeselitz at 1:46 PM on October 31, 2016 [18 favorites]


Read is pronounced in the present tense in "read receipt." That people would pronounce it in the past-tense form is a miniscule outrage compared to the fact that they still exist (and that people continue to pronounce GIF like "gift"*).

Mandatory read receipts are part of why I refuse to use Facebook Messages. The inability to turn off Facebook Messages (or set some kind of auto-reply) are why I pretty much don't use Facebook anymore.

*GIF files are compressed, therefore they download in a jiffy. Don't give me any of that G is for Graphics therefore hard-g nonsense, unless you want to disband NAhh-TOhh, you still pay rental fees for your cable mo-DEEM, or you want me to sent ICk-Eh over to deport you deport you
posted by sparklemotion at 1:47 PM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


It's "reed" receipt because you pair the present tense of a verb with the word "receipt."

Your rocket got launched? You'd get a "launch receipt."

Your rocket crashed and needed a repair? You'd get a "repair receipt."


In your examples, explosion, I would argue that they're all attributive nouns and not verbs. "Read" would also conform to the similar tech-jargon noun "read" as in a hard drive's reads and writes.
posted by Mo Nickels at 1:49 PM on October 31, 2016 [2 favorites]


I just assume most people turned them off a long time ago like I did and ask through other channels.
posted by egypturnash at 1:49 PM on October 31, 2016


I mean, the opposite of "read" is "unread." Are people actually going through their email inboxes and marking emails "reed" and "un-reed"? If so, well, wow - I bow to the plasticity of language.
posted by koeselitz at 1:52 PM on October 31, 2016 [2 favorites]


I think that I've seen an email once or twice that asked me to click OK or something to read it first. I'm pretty sure that I just deleted* them without reading rather than agree. Is this a feature that people use often?

I delete 75% of my work email without reading. It saves me a lot of time.
posted by octothorpe at 1:56 PM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


Unfortunately it doesn't seem that Gmail for business offers them which is too bad.

Au contraire! And therein lies a tale ...

Many years ago, long before Google Apps or G Suite (whatever you want to call it) did offer read receipts (however you want to pronounce it), I worked as a training consultant on a huge Google Apps deployment for a major metro area. The customer in question had previously used an email system that did offer read receipts, and they relied on read receipts extensively. I trained several thousand people there, and nearly every one asked me how to use read receipts in Gmail. Every one was quite crestfallen to find out that it didn't support them, and yelled at me about it. Good times!

They all pronounced it "reed" from the Mayor's staffers on down to the guys who fill in potholes, for what that's worth.
posted by me & my monkey at 2:05 PM on October 31, 2016 [4 favorites]


At the post office, we can opt to get a delivery confirmation. Note that this is not "delivered confirmation," because that's awkward and sounds bad, and is redundant as well. Confirmation of delivery, not confirmation of having been delivered. Receipt of viewing, not receipt of having viewed. Receipt of reading, not receipt of having read.

So it's "reed", but the term "read receipt" is a poorly chosen one. Not only is "read" ambiguous ("reading" alleviates this, but still doesn't sound good), but "receipt" is not a metaphor we're used to in the context of computing/internet. I think view notification is probably clearer. They probably didn't go with that because we think of a notification as a separate message, the sort of thing that could appear in your lock screen. I can't think of anything better though.
posted by naju at 2:12 PM on October 31, 2016


Are people actually going through their email inboxes and marking emails "reed" and "un-reed"?

When you reed an email, it goes from unred to red.

The problem with suggesting this is an analogue of "delivery receipt" (or "launch receipt," or "repair receipt") is that all of those are nouns in this context, not verbs. ...

Are you actually referring to a "receipt for the read"? Because if you're not, then "read receipt" is not analogous to "delivery receipt" or "launch receipt" or "repair receipt."


Yes, it's a receipt for the read, as in "I have red this email, here is a reed receipt for it". Read: (noun 36.an act or instance of reading). It fits in with the other examples:

I have launched this rocketship, here is a receipt for the launch. Launch: noun (11. the act of launching.)
I have repaired this widget, here is a receipt for the repair. Repair: noun (6. an act, process, or work of repairing)

To take it a step further, if the correct form of a receipt given post doing something is "[noun form] receipt," red receipt doesn't fit. Red is not the noun form of the verb "to read", reed is.
posted by sparklemotion at 2:14 PM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


I spend half my day updating style guides and talking about grammar, but even I can't be bothered with this one. I deal with spelling, not pronunciation. Make it reed, make it red, you do you, just quit trying to put two spaces after your periods and we will be fine.
posted by emjaybee at 2:24 PM on October 31, 2016 [6 favorites]


Homographs are a pedantic personal hell.
posted by and for no one at 2:39 PM on October 31, 2016


Metafilter: How do we humans even communicate.
posted by pwinn at 2:47 PM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


I always took it to mean "reed." As in: "Hey you! Did you read (reed) my email? If you did, send me a receipt." Although, I guess the reply to that would be: "Yes, I read (red) it. Here's your receipt." So the answer to the reed/red question--for me at least--would be both.
posted by spacely_sprocket at 2:54 PM on October 31, 2016


Am I the only one here that has never read or heard of or know what the hell "read receipts" even is? This thread feels like it's from a parallel universe.
posted by zardoz at 2:56 PM on October 31, 2016


What on earth is the context for this? Where would I encounter the phrase "read receipts"?

I'm with you; this expression is not in my vocabulary. But it's apparently related to that email (or maybe just Outlook) feature where you can get some acknowledgement that whoever's not only received your email, but opened it. Kinda like paying extra for Certified Mail at the Post Office. In my working worlds I've noticed a few emails like this, received from the sort of co-worker I'd characterize as 'weenies' but perhaps it's standard procedure in some offices (the chatter upthread indicating that this is so). Those enamored of this feature make the curious assumption that just because somebody's opened your email, they've read it.
posted by Rash at 2:59 PM on October 31, 2016


Not just email. Also used for, e.g., Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram messages. (Many apps have this on by default, and some don't let you turn it off)
posted by naju at 3:09 PM on October 31, 2016


koeselitz: "Now, "read" can be a noun. It's a weird noun, though, and relatively colloquial. You sometimes say "I need to get a read on him," maybe, or "this book is worth a read." But I feel like that's not what's happening with the term "read receipt." "

I was thinking this exact thing except with the opposite conclusion: "read" (as "reed") is used pretty frequently as a noun in certain technical contexts. For example, people might remark that a certain database can achieve X reads per second and Y writes per second, where "read" and "write" here is interpreted as "read operation" and "write operation". From there, it's a short hop to phrases like "read latency", "read throughput", "read error", and, yes, "read receipt".
posted by mhum at 3:14 PM on October 31, 2016 [3 favorites]


I feel like I got tricked into reading that Tim Cook interview, I gave up pretty far into it but there was nothing about read (reed) receipts.--bleep

Maybe this is what the link was supposed to go to.
posted by eye of newt at 3:43 PM on October 31, 2016


minuscule
posted by Hal Mumkin at 4:37 PM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


It took me about six years to finally realize and accept that no, "being a Viking at something" is not an actual metaphor. Hopefully it won't take as long to settle on this one.
posted by Room 641-A at 5:28 PM on October 31, 2016 [5 favorites]


Are you actually referring to a "receipt for the read"?

You damn well are. While I don't know who came up with the concept, as a software developer I am fairly certain the people who came up with the implementation never thought twice about pronouncing it "reed" for the same reason I didn't - as mhum points out the noun "read" meaning a single act of reading is standard usage among computer people.
posted by atoxyl at 6:16 PM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


Sorry it seems I'm at best the third to make that point. I just had to because this

I'm confident that's how the people who invented it pronounced it to themselves, since they were concerned with the actual status of the email in the inbox ("read" or "unread") and not with some nebulous verbal concept "to read" or abstract noun "the read."

I know is absolutely not important - does it even matter what the people who invented it think? - but if you're going to venture to make a claim about that I would based on my experience happily bet real money that you've got it backwards.
posted by atoxyl at 6:30 PM on October 31, 2016


I mean, the opposite of "read" is "unread." Are people actually going through their email inboxes and marking emails "reed" and "un-reed"? If so, well, wow - I bow to the plasticity of language.

Good lord there are a few things i would like to un-reed
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:12 PM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


I have no opinion on how this phrase ought, like morally, to be pronounced. But I'm not surprised if [reed] is common or even dominant, because that's how the most frequent sense of "read" is pronounced. If you don't happen to analyze "read receipt" in the particular (not especially obvious) way that implies [red], then you're going to default to [reed]. It's the same as how lots of people say "long-lived" with a short "i", which drives me crazy but only because it offends my sense of where the phrase comes from. Many (most?) speakers don't analyze the phrase that way, they sound it out and pronounce "lived" as they would in almost all other contexts.

It also doesn't surprise me that both sides here have their rationalizations which I suspect are mostly post hoc
posted by aws17576 at 7:44 PM on October 31, 2016


aws17576: “It's the same as how lots of people say 'long-lived' with a short 'i', which drives me crazy but only because it offends my sense of where the phrase comes from. Many (most?) speakers don't analyze the phrase that way, they sound it out and pronounce "lived" as they would in almost all other contexts.”

Huh? This one at least seems logical to me morphologically. People pronounce the noun "lives" (plural of "life") with a long I. People pronounce the verb "live" with a short I. Have you ever heard someone say "oh, my aunt Betsy laives in Manhattan," or "cats have nine lihves"? I don't think so – so in the term "short-lived," a construction using the verbal form of "live," it makes sense that the I is short. Right?

sparklemotion: “Red is not the noun form of the verb ‘to read’, reed is.”

No, it's not. The noun form of the verb "read" is "reading," as in "the reading of an email," not "the read of an email," which is awkward and not how anyone would talk. By the logic you've laid out above, it should be called a "reading receipt."

But it's not, because Outlook and other email systems were designed by computer people, and computer people are not interested in anything in this context besides the technical status of the email in the email client. You cannot and will never tell anyone whether someone has actually read an email with their eyes, done a reading on it (or a read, or whatever). You can only tell someone when the technical status of the email flips from "unread" to "read." Which is where the term comes from – the technical status of the email: "read" or "unread."

I say, frankly more for myself than anyone else at this point, that this is my own opinion, and what makes sense to me, but words can be pronounced however people want to pronounce them. I'm only talking about where the word came from, and how the people who came up with the term probably pronounce it. But they are not necessarily the arbiters of how it should be pronounced. Just look at "gif," after all.
posted by koeselitz at 8:28 PM on October 31, 2016 [3 favorites]


Wait hold on Koeselitz you are actually a computer programmer (according to your profile)? And a database programmer at that? Sorry I didn't realize that - my reaction was honestly no way is Koeselitz coming from an insider perspective because it is so natural to me to say "reed" because I talk about "reads" every day. Now I don't know what to think!
posted by atoxyl at 9:10 PM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


This turns out to be a fundamentally and deeply divisive issue!
posted by atoxyl at 9:11 PM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


My most frequent email act is "Mark As Read," which I pronounce Red in my head as I don't Reed it.
posted by mississippi at 9:17 PM on October 31, 2016


I agree the "reading receipt" might be the best option since it avoids the particular unusual-to-many-people use of "read." I'm just legitimately surprised that someone who is presumably familiar with that use in the same context as I am would still find it objectionable.
posted by atoxyl at 9:41 PM on October 31, 2016


Well, really the pronunciations of words should not be objectionable to me, and I'm sorry for giving any impression otherwise. It's funny how attached we can get to the things we've always done a particular way.
posted by koeselitz at 10:32 PM on October 31, 2016


Huh? This one at least seems logical to me morphologically. People pronounce the noun "lives" (plural of "life") with a long I. People pronounce the verb "live" with a short I. Have you ever heard someone say "oh, my aunt Betsy laives in Manhattan," or "cats have nine lihves"? I don't think so – so in the term "short-lived," a construction using the verbal form of "live," it makes sense that the I is short. Right?

Well, that's just it -- I don't think it is derived from the verb form, I think it's from "short life" (exactly as "short-tempered" is derived from "short temper", for example). The f gets voiced because morphology. But as I conceded before, it's evident that some people don't analyze it this way!
posted by aws17576 at 10:51 PM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


Well, really the pronunciations of words should not be objectionable to me, and I'm sorry for giving any impression otherwise. It's funny how attached we can get to the things we've always done a particular way.

Oh I assumed the whole thing was in good fun. It's just funny to me because when you said "computer people think about it like this" and seemed so confident about that I immediately thought "no that's totally off-base and I know this" when actually we are coming from pretty much the same place yet don't see it the same way at all.
posted by atoxyl at 11:42 PM on October 31, 2016 [1 favorite]


I mean, the opposite of "read" is "unread." Are people actually going through their email inboxes and marking emails "reed" and "un-reed"?
Well I do mark emails "reed" (as in, "read this again later") but I do it by unsetting the "red" flag. And I call it a "red receipt" and never considered it could be called anything else, but then again I was a mail admin when that goddamn horrible misfeature was implemented and think of it as relating to the IMAP "red" property the same way as the authors presumably do. And I turn that fucker off everywhere.

(also, GIF with a hard g like in "gutteral")
posted by russm at 1:59 AM on November 1, 2016


"Reed receipt" when referring to that which is attached to email. "Red" when received in text messages (e.g. "Read 4:44 PM").
posted by jenny76 at 4:56 AM on November 1, 2016


It's "reed" receipt because you pair the present tense of a verb with the word "receipt."

Your rocket got launched? You'd get a "launch receipt."

Your rocket crashed and needed a repair? You'd get a "repair receipt."


I'm not sure this is because these examples are verb form, though - they're noun form, it's just that that is the same as verb form for these particular words. A clearer example is perhaps getting a receipt for something having been delivered. You don't get a deliver receipt for that, you get a delivery receipt. So by that logic, it should be a reading receipt, with no ambiguity over pronunciation!
posted by Dysk at 5:35 AM on November 1, 2016


So by that logic, it should be a reading receipt, with no ambiguity over pronunciation!

Unless, of course, it's the receipt you get for buying Reading Railroad.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 8:35 AM on November 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


Unless, of course, it's the receipt you get for buying Reading Railroad.

Mind. Blown.

I mean, of course. Obviously. I just never gave it a second thought.

Have you ever heard someone say "oh, my aunt Betsy laives in Manhattan," or "cats have nine lihves"?


Possibly that art school guy Zach who I knew when I was 20, who spelled his name Xaque.
posted by Room 641-A at 8:50 AM on November 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


me: “Huh? This one at least seems logical to me morphologically. People pronounce the noun "lives" (plural of "life") with a long I. People pronounce the verb 'live' with a short I. Have you ever heard someone say 'oh, my aunt Betsy laives in Manhattan,' or 'cats have nine lihves'? I don't think so – so in the term 'short-lived,' a construction using the verbal form of 'live,' it makes sense that the I is short. Right?”

aws17576: “Well, that's just it -- I don't think it is derived from the verb form, I think it's from 'short life' (exactly as 'short-tempered' is derived from 'short temper', for example). The f gets voiced because morphology. But as I conceded before, it's evident that some people don't analyze it this way!”

Holy cow – you're right! I mean, at the very least, it turns out that "long-lifed" was a Middle English word, and it makes sense to assume that "short-lifed" was, too. I was over here thinking it must be the verbal form, sort of imagining it was somehow analogous to "a life well lived" or something like that, but a person isn't "lived," so your way makes more sense. This seems like one of those things where (as you say) the "v" started to be voiced because of the morphological tendency to voice terminating F's as V's when adding suffixes (leaves, sheaves, etc) and then some time later people decided the "lived" in "short-lived" should be pronounced as though it were verbal. But that ship has sailed, I guess, since the short I is so common now; and anyway technically if we were going to pronounce "short-lifed" as it was in Middle English, we'd have to pronounce the E.
posted by koeselitz at 10:37 AM on November 1, 2016


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