Legal Writing

The Changing Pronunciation of ?Leisure?

By Maeve

When I was about ten years old, my aunt gave me a subscription to a Disney comic. I remember one issue in which Donald Duck and his nephews had a treasure map.

Overheard saying that he was “in search of buried treasure,” Donald tried to deceive the villain who’d heard him by claiming that what he’d really said was “in search of hurried leisure.”

That was in the Fifties.

By the time the “leisure suit” craze struck in the Seventies, not many Americans were pronouncing “leisure” to rhyme with “measure.”

Come to think of it, I don’t know of anyone who pronounces “buried” to rhyme with “hurried.”

Here are the current American pronunciations of these words:

buried [b?r'?d]
hurried [hûr'?]
treasure [tr?zh'?r]
leisure [l?'zh?r] –although some folks still say [l?zh'?r]

What pronunciation changes have you noticed since your were a child?

The Changing Pronunciation of “Leisure”

Full post as published by Daily Writing Tips on December 01, 2008 (boomark / email).