How is asterisk pronounced

Annual surveys have gauged the acceptability of particular usages and grammatical constructions. Go to our Crossword Puzzle Solver and type in the letters that you know, and the Solver will produce a list of possible solutions. The articles in our blog examine new words, revised definitions, interesting images from the fifth edition, discussions of usage, and more. Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages.

You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices:. The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.

Hoist that big historical asterisk skyward and place it next to his name. In a year with less unrest economically, that would be an asterisk. But now, in the name of religion, some people want to add an asterisk.

Instead of guessing, put an asterisk in the vacant spot and have the search engine figure it out for you. I have put an asterisk against the names of the colleges whose presidents are graduates of Oberlin. By the asterisk above mentioned the writer refers to a circle surrounded by rays, a sun symbol of male significance. There is a tendency to confine the asterisk to such cases, and to use the full stop for shorter ellipses.

Most of these are recollected by Professor Cromwell and those with the asterisk are furnished by others. The phenomenon is called metathesis , and it is actually not that uncommon in English and many other languages. Note how you say three , but not threeteen or thrid ; you say thirteen and third instead. Many languages have words that show this phenomenon, and some use it as a regular part of their grammar e.

The process of metathesis has altered the shape of many familiar words in the English language, as well. So, to answer your question, yes, that's a natural change that happens in many languages.

It can start off as a slip of the tongue, or as deliberate "laziness" if you will, but once the "wrong" pronunciation gets sufficiently established among native speakers, you can no longer call it wrong from the linguistics standpoint. As one of our linguists once put it elsewhere , "metathesis can be done in error, but ultimately, if the alternate form becomes established in some dialect, it is hard to argue that every person doing it is making an error.

Whether or not the same will happen to asteriks , is, of course, pure speculation. However, it is common in some parts and subcultures of the U. So they will say "He axed me a question" instead of "He asked me a question. He could not say the word asks in the script, so we had to do an edit and switch the word. It is true that there are some folk out there who feel one pronunciation is wrong. However, I have to disagree with the absolutist attitude of a lot of the answers have.

In the software engineering circles I run in, either pronunciation is commonly heard, and both are considered perfectly acceptable.

It is used extensively in most programming languages for multiplication, pointer operations, and occasionally exponentiation. So if you use the word exclusively in those circles, either pronunciation is generally accepted. Perhaps the dictionaries will catch up with this common usage at some point, or perhaps the absolutist position will ultimately prevail. Time will tell. Sign up to join this community.

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