To die for every day

The other day a friend who happened to check out Copia told me "I really liked that quote-to-die bit". It took me a moment to realize she really meant "Quotidie". Her pronunciation had never even occurred to me (I guess I lack imagination).

"Quotidie" is, of course, Latin for "daily". There is meant to be a pun on the fact that a quote heads each entry ("Quote-a-day")., but this is a bit incidental. I certainly pronounce the o as in "ought", the "tid" as in "teed off", and the ending almost to rhyme with in "dee-jay" (much less emphasis on the "dee"). I'm too lazy to bust out the proper IPA for it.

Anyway, in hopes that it will prevent any misunderstanding, I'll use the syllable length markers in the title from now, with macrons over the first i and the e ("Quotīdiē").

I guess as Michael Kaplan would say:

This post brought to you by the letters "ī" (U +012B, a.k.a. LATIN SMALL LETTER I WITH MACRON) and "ē" (U +012B, a.k.a. LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH MACRON)

[Uche Ogbuji]

via Copia