28-05-2025
It's fine to mispronounce ‘mischievous' now, says Susie Dent
It is one of the most mispronounced words in the English language, causing purists to despair.
A sizeable percentage of the population pronounces 'mischievous' as 'mischiev-i-ous', with the mistake even making its way onto the BBC.
And now these grammar miscreants have found an unlikely champion in Susie Dent, the Countdown star and lexicographer, who has declared that 'mischievious' is now an acceptable word and we should accept the extra syllable.
At the Hay Festival, Dent said: 'Something which used to rile me was people pronouncing 'mischievous' as 'mischievious'. But now it is everywhere and there is a very good reason why people do.
'It's the way English people have always pushed out a pronunciation that is no longer familiar to them. We don't have any 'ievous' words any more, and they're pushing it to something that they do know, and that's 'evious'.
'So I have now decided it's a fascinating snapshot of how language works and it doesn't really bother me, not anymore.'
Purists who do object to the mispronunciation include Frank Cottrell-Boyce, the author and Children's Laureate. He shared a social media post last week which lamented: 'Even people on Radio 4 can't pronounce 'mischievous' now.'
Other people annoyed by the usage include Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist, who asked on social media: ''Mischievous' has no third 'I' and is pronounced with the stress on the first syllable. But a mutant [sic] 'I' + stress on 2nd syllable is spreading. As a mischievous memeticist, I'm curious about the selection pressure driving it. Is it easier to say? Or is some celebrity being copied?'
Dent also spoke about words she loves, but have fallen out of use.
One is 'respair', a word that was used in the 16th or 17th century meaning fresh or hope or recovery, and the opposite of 'despair'. Another is 'ipsedixitism' – the dogmatic insistence that something is true because someone else said it, despite a lack of any other evidence.
Dent, who joined Countdown's dictionary corner in 1992 and combined the job with working for the Oxford University Press, said people worry about dealing with her because they mistake her for 'a bit of a linguistic pedant'.
She said: 'I did have a lovely, lovely builder once say that he could never bring himself to text me because he thought I needed semi-colons in my text messages. Which is completely untrue.'
