pronunciation of suspect


I only caught the end of this but I heard several people say "suspect" or "suspects", when describing the people suspected of being the criminals, with the accent on the second syllable. Curious, I looked up the word. The pronunciations I found had the accent on the second syllable for the verb but the noun had it on the first.

Did people pronounce it suspect' back then?

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I wonder if the pronunciation has changed or if the actors just got it wrong. Old movies often have odd pronunciations—at least odd to our modern ears. I remember the title character in Doctor X (played by Lionel Atwill) continually pronounced scalpel as scal-PEL.


...Justin

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Thanks for the reply!

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Having watched many whodunit films from the era (it's my favorite era and favorite genre), I've noticed that the noun "suspect" was pronounced consistently with the accent on the second syllable (as the verb is pronounced) until 1934 (there is a transition period during this year in which it is pronounced one way in some films and another in others). The famous 1934 film THE THIN MAN is one of the last films I know of in which someone refers to "the sus-PECTS."

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What you're describing is part of why I love watching old movies. Their way of talking, the cadence, is different; many of the words and phrases have different meanings; and their pronunciation of words we use today differs. I always enjoy hearing the way they say Los Angeles (they say it with a g as in 'guy' instead of a g as in 'gelatin'). When they say 'make love' they are usually not referring to sex but to sweet talking someone.

It's just a reminder that language is a living, breathing thing. Languages change, they grow, they die, and it's always happening all the time. If people start using words and phrases in different ways, soon, the misused form replaces the formerly correct one. Linguistics fascinates me.


Woman, man! That's the way it should be Tarzan. [Tarzan and his mate]

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I thought I heard an unusual pronunciation of "Boston" also.


-------Gå på disco rulla hatt, med SunTrip varje natt-------

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I wondered about this when I heard William Powell call people susPECTs in one of the Thin Man movies, so I looked the word up in a couple of old dictionaries. My 1913 Webster's (1919 printing) has the accent on the second syllable in both the verb form and the noun form. By the time they printed my Webster's Unabridged Second edition in 1950 the accent had shifted in the noun. The first pronunciation offered was SUSpect, with susPECT offered as a secondary choice. So the pronunciation was changing even as the Philo Vance and Thin Man movies were being made.

By the way, ever notice how Powell pronounced homicide (in the Thin Man - I don't think he says it in this movie)? The first syllable is HOME - as in homo sapiens, I guess. And no doubt he would have pronounced homosexual HOM-osexual, the root coming from the Greek word meaning 'same': think of homonym, a word with the same sound as another. Somehow the sounds got reversed in the course of time.

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Lingerie is another word that changed in mid 20th century. It used to be pronounced much more like the French but I guess that didn't sound right to American ears. Same for chaise longue or as we know it, lounge. British words also changed in the postwar era. It might be that radio and then tv had a big effect on postwar language.

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I first noticed William Powell accenting the second syllable in his skit in Paramount on Parade (Paramount 1930). I remember wondering about it at the time. Powell was always so precise in his diction, that I believe that is just the way he pronounced it and probably continued to do so until he was "directed" to change. William Powell is pretty hard to argue with on such matters.


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