14

Liquorice is pronounced ˈlɪkərɪʃ. But every other word I can think of ending with -ice is pronounced differently (such as police or rice). How did liquorice get such a strange pronunciation, or alternatively, to be spelt like that?

Improve this question
6
  • 5
    And if you think that's weird, take a look at "colonel" and "samhain" for 2 words with really unintuitive pronunciation.
    – Andy
    Commented Mar 1, 2011 at 20:23
  • 1
    Sometimes, just to annoy people, I like to pronounce "colonel" like it's spelled.
    – Wayne Werner
    Commented Apr 30, 2012 at 14:25
  • 1
    The only way I know to pronounce that is [ˈlɪkɹɨʃ], with only two syllables. The OED2 gives the old /ˈlɪkərɪs/, which I’ve myself never heard.
    – tchrist ♦
    Commented May 6, 2012 at 19:34
  • 2
    John Wells discussed this on his blog. One of his readers wrote in giving a 1685 spelling "licorish", along with a speculation that this pronunciation originated in a regional dialect of English which changed many final s's to sh's. It's possible that this pronunciation was carried to America, spread there, and then was carried back to England, possibly long after this pronunciation had died out in England.
    – Peter Shor
    Commented May 7, 2012 at 15:05
  • 1
    @Andy, at least ‘Samhain’ is simply pronounced (approximately) as in the donor language, in which its pronunciation, /ˈsaʊənʲ/, is entirely regular; and ‘colonel’ is regular enough as long as you know that the first l is a later introduction (based on Italian), and that it used to be spelt ‘coronel’. ‘Liquorice’, on the other hand, follows no rule or pattern present in neither donor language nor recipient language at all.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Oct 10, 2013 at 0:10

7 Answers 7

Reset to default
15

It actually used to be pronounced /lɪkoɹˈɛs/, as evidenced by the Old French word we borrowed it from, "licoresse".

The last phoneme probably shifted from /s/ to /ʃ/ due to a similar process that happened with the words "pressure" and "sugar".

Why it changed and not other similar words? Who knows. English speakers for a long time have had a twisted lack of consistency. Why are the two words, from the same language and borrowed at roughly the same time period, "prestige" and "vestige" pronounced so differently?

Improve this answer
3
  • I've heard "vestige" as both /vɛstɪdʒ/ and /vɛstiʒ/, the last rhyming with "prestige". Admittedly, the former greatly dominates.
    – wnoise
    Commented Apr 11, 2011 at 23:09
  • I have only ever heard prestige and vestige pronounced to rhyme with each other - locations: Scotland, central London, Australia and Falkland Islands. Never heard either with the "ɪdʒ" sound.
    – Rory Alsop
    Commented May 5, 2011 at 7:42
  • 7
    I don’t think you got /ʃ/ from what happened to pressure, sugar, and in some speakers, issue. The OED mentions regarding sugar that “The quantity of the vowel of the first syllable appears to have been variable from early times (compare the spellings suigur, sewger, seukere, and suggur), but the development of initial /sj/ into /ʃ/ makes it probable that the long ū /uː/ prevailed (compare sure), and that shortening took place afterwards; /ˈsjuːgə(r)/ survives in some north midl. districts.” but I see no /sj/ here for that to happen.
    – tchrist ♦
    Commented May 6, 2012 at 19:38
6

As a supplement: The pronunciation with [ɪʃ] may also have been influenced by a very old variant of what is now lecherous: lickerish, which broadened its sense to "greedy, desirous" and at one time had the side meaning "tempting to the appetite".

Improve this answer
5

I have always pronounced liquorice with 's' not 'sh'. I had never heard it pronounced as 'sh' until I moved from Scotland to England, so as far as I'm concerned, the English pronounce it incorrectly and the Scots pronounce it correctly.

Improve this answer
3

I had this argument in school with my English teacher; I pronounced it with the iss, not the ish. She showed me a dictionary where it was pronounced ish, but instead of taking her word I decided to do some research in older dictionaries... we were both right. The original way was the way I had said it with the iss sound, but due to an overwhelming amount of people pronouncing it ish it was changed. Shortly after it had been changed, there were two ways printed and an explanation, but now it seems this has been lost over the years and simply changed to ish. I refuse to roll with the masses and still pronounce it iss not ish.

Ah well, it is my choice; and in my mind, I am equally correct saying it this way.

Improve this answer
2

I am Scottish but moved with my family to England as a child. Having been brought up most of my childhood in England I always used the 'liquorish' pronunciation but was told off by my Scottish mother who always wrote it 'licorice' - using the 'riss' pronunciation

Improve this answer
1
  • Hello, RVer. This would need more authentication to make it into an acceptable answer on ELU. When you have enough rep points, you can tag on snippets like this as comments.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Aug 9, 2015 at 15:16
2

It's possible that the pronunciation of the common noun liquorice was influenced by the plant's Latinized genus name Liquiritia, anglicized as /lɪkwɪɹɪʃə/ (and these days less often used than the official Greek name Glycyrrhiza). Other plants where English speakers tend to use the genus name more than the English name include eucalyptus (gum tree) and ficus (weeping fig).

So if people sometimes heard the term Liquiritia in reference to liquorice, the pronunciations might have converged over time. This convergence may have been helped along by the fact that the English word can be traced back to the Latin one through French.

Improve this answer
0

Liquorice (American English: licorice) is a word that derives from the Old French licoresse (the equivalent of the modern French règlisse). The English word kept the pronunciation of the original word.

There is another word that has a similar pronunciation of -rice, and that has origin from a French word: caprice (AmE /kəˈpris/, BrE /kəˈpriːs/).

Improve this answer
4
  • 1
    Minor correction: American English form is "licorice". "Licorize" appears to be the name of a web-browser add-on.
    – Hellion
    Commented Mar 1, 2011 at 20:38
  • 6
    Er, caprice ends in [is], and liquorice ends in [ɪʃ]. I fail to see how the pronunciation of caprice illuminates the question about liquorice at all.
    – JSBձոգչ
    Commented Mar 1, 2011 at 20:41
  • 1
    @JSBangs: I was only reporting that licorice is not the only word where -rice is pronounced differently from the usual, and the other word with a similar pronunciation is derived from a French word too. I didn't say it was the same pronunciation.
    – avpaderno
    Commented Mar 1, 2011 at 20:53
  • 9
    Isn't the -ice ending of caprice pronounced the same as that of police?
    – psmears
    Commented Mar 1, 2011 at 21:16

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .