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DelightMachine -> RE: How do you pronounce Domme and why? (4/2/2006 4:11:16 PM)
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I suspect it's just ignorance to say "dom-MAY" -- but I could be wrong. It also might stem from people who are (or a decade or two ago, WERE) far away from play parties and munches where they'd hear the word. I dunno.
I don't think there's quite a right or wrong way to pronounce this, especially because it's a relatively recent word. Here's a web page from Answers.com that reproduces a passage from Wikipedia. None of this is conclusive evidence for anything -- there ain't no authority -- but it is additional information:
The term domme is a coined pseudo-French female variation of the slang dom (short for dominant). There is confusion on its pronunciation, with some pronouncing it identically to dom and some pronouncing the final e as a second syllable, e.g. saying dom-MAY or DOM-may. It appears that more BDSM authorities prefer the first pronunciation (identical to dom), by analogy to one-syllable French-derived words like femme or blonde.
http://www.answers.com/topic/dominatrix
Here's another word that's often mispronounced the same way: FORTE (essentially meaning "strong point"; usually used in terms of a person's talents, I guess). I originally wrote "It's pronounced like FORT, not like FORTAY. At least it was originally supposed to be pronounced that way." But I got ambitious and actually looked it up online, and FORTAY is such a widespread error that it's already standard. Hey, it happens in English. But you can still annoy your friends and make enemies by correcting their pronunciation.
Here's what Merriam-Webster's (American) dictionary online says about it:
Main Entry: 1forte
Pronunciation: 'fOrt, 'fort; 2 is often 'for-"tA or for-'tA or 'for-tE
Function: noun
Etymology: French fort, from fort, adjective, strong
Date: circa 1648
1 : the part of a sword or foil blade that is between the middle and the hilt and that is the strongest part of the blade
2 : one's strong point
usage In forte we have a word derived from French that in its "strong point" sense has no entirely satisfactory pronunciation. Usage writers have denigrated \'for-"tA\ and \'for-tE\ because they reflect the influence of the Italian-derived 2forte. Their recommended pronunciation \'fort\, however, does not exactly reflect French either: the French would write the word le fort and would rhyme it with English for. So you can take your choice, knowing that someone somewhere will dislike whichever variant you choose. All are standard, however. In British English \'fo-"tA\ and \'fot\ predominate; \'for-"tA\ and \for-'tA\ are probably the most frequent pronunciations in American English.
http://www2.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/mwdictsn?va=forte
Merriam-Webster doesn't have "domme."
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