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xiphiasThis is something of a pet peeve.
The word "doth" is pronounced "duth." It's the same word as "does", except that the "s" is pronounced as "th". You just pronounce it as if you were saying "does" but with a lisp.
This was beaten in to me, figuratively, when I was fourteen, by Ms. McCarthy of Arlington High School -- a holy terror of an English teacher, who didn't LITERALLY beat these facts into us, even though she was an ex-nun, because, as it was a public school, she wasn't allowed to whack us with rulers. Ms. McCarthy was one of the teachers I most hated in school, and respect most now -- I respected her then, too. She's the one that was claiming that "Merchant of Venice" wasn't anti-Semitic, and required us to write a term paper demonstrating that. I wrote a paper, with pages of endnotes and an appendix, showing that there was absolutely no way that Shakespeare COULDN'T have been anti-Semitic, and that OF COURSE the play was anti-Semitic.
This, of course, was a total defiance of what the teacher instructed us to do, and I was prepared to get an "F" on it.
Final page comment was "Excellent paper, well researched, well written, I disagree with everything you say, A-." The minus was for a couple typos and a subject-verb disagreement. Which were examples of TOTAL carelessness on my part, and she would have been well within her rights to knock it down to a B+ or even a B for that kind of sloppiness.
Anyway, in tribute to a hated English teacher whom I quite love, I pass along this pet peeve: it's pronounced "duth".
The word "doth" is pronounced "duth." It's the same word as "does", except that the "s" is pronounced as "th". You just pronounce it as if you were saying "does" but with a lisp.
This was beaten in to me, figuratively, when I was fourteen, by Ms. McCarthy of Arlington High School -- a holy terror of an English teacher, who didn't LITERALLY beat these facts into us, even though she was an ex-nun, because, as it was a public school, she wasn't allowed to whack us with rulers. Ms. McCarthy was one of the teachers I most hated in school, and respect most now -- I respected her then, too. She's the one that was claiming that "Merchant of Venice" wasn't anti-Semitic, and required us to write a term paper demonstrating that. I wrote a paper, with pages of endnotes and an appendix, showing that there was absolutely no way that Shakespeare COULDN'T have been anti-Semitic, and that OF COURSE the play was anti-Semitic.
This, of course, was a total defiance of what the teacher instructed us to do, and I was prepared to get an "F" on it.
Final page comment was "Excellent paper, well researched, well written, I disagree with everything you say, A-." The minus was for a couple typos and a subject-verb disagreement. Which were examples of TOTAL carelessness on my part, and she would have been well within her rights to knock it down to a B+ or even a B for that kind of sloppiness.
Anyway, in tribute to a hated English teacher whom I quite love, I pass along this pet peeve: it's pronounced "duth".