3

I'm a native speaker, and I would naturally read the word VAY-guh-ri.

I've never actually heard anyone say the word, I only ever see it in writing.

But I also know that you can pronounce it vuh-GARE-i. Does anyone actually pronounce it like this? Where does this weird pronunciation come from?

blummy
  • 31
  • 1
    I've never heard the latter either. The Wiktionary article agrees with "formerly /ˌvəˈɡɛɹi/, now commonly /ˈveɪˌɡəɹi/". –  Jul 05 '11 at 08:30
  • 2
    The Oxford English Dictionary gives /ˈveɪˌɡəɹi/ first, /ˌvəˈɡɛɹi/ second (never heard /ˌvəˈɡɛɹi/ myself). – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica Jul 05 '11 at 08:42
  • 2
    W.S.Gilbert's "Iolanthe" (1882) requires the second: "A plague on this vagary / I'm in a nice quandary / .. " going on to rhyme it with "chary", "fairy", "library" and "seminary". Of course, some of the other rhyming words need unconventional pronunciations too. – Colin Fine Jul 05 '11 at 13:45
  • I've never heard this pronounced vuh-GARE-i - so as far as I'm concerned this pronunciation came from *you*! – Bill Jul 05 '11 at 08:50
  • 1
    Word power made easy by Norman Lewis says the word is va-GARE-ee and I was pleasantly surprised, but this is a pretty old book where secretive is se-KREE-tive, so I'm not so sure –  Feb 23 '15 at 12:04
  • there are two different words spelled "secretive"—one has to do with secrets, the other with secretions. – Brian Hitchcock Feb 23 '15 at 13:08
  • @Cerberus: wouldn't it be /vəˈɡɛərɪ/? It has the MARY vowel, not the MERRY vowel, for people who distinguish the two. – herisson Dec 03 '15 at 23:57
  • @user111494 My sister was visiting and yesterday she mentioned "se KREE ting something away". So that is still in use in England. Never heard of ve GARE ee, though. – Phil Sweet Jun 19 '16 at 04:24
  • My Irish mother in law used the latter pronounciation. She had heard it used when she was a parlour maid in London in the 20's and 30's.Eaton Place etc. –  Jun 18 '16 at 14:32

3 Answers3

5

It used to be pronounced vuh-GARE-i, but it's changed. As @Tim above stated:

(GenAm) IPA: formerly /ˌvəˈɡɛɹi/, now commonly /ˈveɪˌɡəɹi/

It's usually pronounced VAY -guh-ri, but there are still people who pronounce it the "other way", as can be seen here

Thursagen
  • 41,919
1

In Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe (1882) the old pronunciation definitely held:

We are dainty little fairies
Ever singing, ever dancing;
We indulge in our vagaries
In a fashion most entrancing.

I have to admit that since 1882 lyricists seem generally to have fought shy of using vagaries in their rhyme-schemes, so as a way of dating pronunciation-change, it's a bit lacking.

Janus Bahs Jacquet
  • 32,382
slam
  • 621
0

"Vagary" is one of a number of words from Latin or Romance languages that had a long, stressed vowel in the second-to-last syllable in the source language, but that can be pronounced in present-day English with the stress shifted to the third-to-last syllable.

The Oxford English Dictionary says "probably < Latin vagārī (Italian vagare) to wander". (Italian "vagare" is pronounced [vaˈgaːre].)

Other words like vagary that used to be pronounced with stress on the second syllable (some still can be) are balcony (< Italian balcone [balˈkoːne]), abdomen (< Latin abdōmen) and acumen (< Latin acūmen).

While the etymology somewhat explains the existence of the variant with stress on the second-to-last syllable, there are also words with somewhat similar etymology where as far as I know the stress has been on the third-to-last syllable for much longer, such as plethora (< Greek πληθώρα, its derivative Latin plethora, and its derivative French pléthore; the OED says "In 18th-cent. dictionaries the word is occasionally recorded with stress on the second syllable (Bailey (1731, 1735)), apparently following the ancient Greek stress") and retina (< Latin retina, with the suffix -ina that had a long "ī" in Classical Latin).

herisson
  • 81,803