GRANDIOSE

During a conversation, an acquaintance used the word "grandiose", not once, but twice, pronouncing it as "gran-doyce", rather than:

Gerald and I looked helplessly at each other, obviously wondering, "What to do?"  The obvious answer was "Nothing!"  I said, "Well, if he says it again, I'll say something."

I was reminded of my grandmother who loved using big words (oh, my, maybe it's genetic!) but she was also the mistress of mangling the words with her unique mispronunciations.  She would say "in-come-pet-unt",  "re-seep", "per-cue-late-ur", "heighth", and the worst of all: 

 "pro-nounce-e-a-shun".  

One day, she told my mother about receiving a government document which had written on it:  "Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate."

but when she told mother, the word mutilate came out as "mutt-uh-late".

To this day, whenever we mispronounce a word, someone in the family will invariably mutter "
MUTT-UH-LATE" to bring us back to our senses!