A Little Class, A Lot of Sass

It's not a secret that I am highly perturbed by the mispronunciation of supposedly. I am increasingly annoyed each time I hear it, and even more so when it comes from the mouth of my accomplished working journalist of a graduate school professor. I have class once a week, and each week, it never fails, nor does it cease to amaze me. Supposively inevitably slips out.

You can certainly imagine my surprise, then, at the strange turn of events this week. Occasionally we read excerpts from nonfiction work aloud in class, and then go on to discuss the passages with regard to style, tone, content, methodology of reporting, etc. My professor was reading an excerpt from Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test when he came upon the word supposedly. I was reading a bit ahead, and I flinched. In reading the word, would he also mispronounce it, even with the -ED- plain to see and no -IVE- in sight? What would become of this momentous occasion?

Well, folks, history was made. He read, "supposedly," perfectly. Now if only he could commit that to memory.