The Oxford English Dictionary dates yoo-hoo to 1924, as noted by the American Dialect Society, and compares it to yo-ho, originally a nautical phrase also sometimes used in yo-heave-ho. Their first documented use of yo-ho is from 1769 in William Falconer's An universal dictionary of the marine: Hola-ho, a cry which answers to yoe-hoe. Yo-ho derives from two interjections. Yo: an exclamation of ...
It usually says /yoo/ when it follows an unvoiced consonant (b, d, p, c, f, h, t). As languages evolve both in pronunciation and dialect, this 'rule' is weakened somewhat, however it does still hold true in the majority of cases.
+1 It seems that vacuum is the odd word out when placed in a lineup with (for example) continuum, individuum, menstruum, and residuum. I don't know why the -uum in vacuum came to be pronounced differently from the -uum in the others, but to judge from the pronunciation offered in John Walker's A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary, and Expositor of the English Language (1807), 'twas not always thus.
It’s an interjection, and like many other interjections, it’s spelt in dozens of different ways. P.U. is not one I’ve seen before, and I doubt I’d recognise it; and pew has the disadvantage of being a word with a very different meaning. But pyewww, pyuuuuuww, pyeouwwgh and many other varieties are easily recognisable. I’m not aware of any particularly established way of spelling it.
U is "oo" for nearly all American, and a substantial number of British English speakers in most words when it falls in a stressed syllable after one of the following consonants: /l/ /s/ /z/ U is "oo" for most American speakers, but "yoo" for most British speakers when it falls in a stressed syllable after one of the following consonants: /t/ /d ...
The pronunciation of Greek letters by scientists isn't very different from the pronunciation of the Greek letters in the respective countries: American scientists pronounce them pretty much the same way the general American population does, and so on. So your question is actually about why the English pronunciation of Greek letters, and the answer is that it is based on (but not always ...
Persons who not only want to know about everything but who, to a certain extent, do know about everything, are called universalists. (Dictionary com) universalist [ yoo-nuh-vur-suh-list ] noun 1.a person characterized by universalism, as in knowledge, interests, or activities. (Dictionary com) universalism [ yoo-nuh-vur-suh-liz-uhm ] noun 2. a universal range of knowledge, interests, or ...
I heard someone pronounce UI as yooey. I guess this comes from the pronunciation of GUI, which is gooey. How common is this compared to yoo-eye and user-interface?
When adressing a group of people and wanting to find out who belongs to a certain subgroup, is it correct to use "who of you" or "which of you" at the beginning of the question? For example, would ...
I want an adjective to define someone who is very knowledged of many things, even unusual stuff. I know about polymath and its uses, but I was searching for a word more general, that could be used...
