For lack of a banked CIDU for use as daily standalone, let’s have a really excellent OY!
From Philip:
Standard spelling dispute: Oh wait, can I use the regular word without it being a spoiler? Yeah, sure …. So, why do dictionaries insist on rigmarole as the standard spelling (with pronunciation IPA / ˈrɪg məˌroʊl / respelling [ rig-muh-rohl ] ), and relegate to “variant” the spelling rigamarole (with pronunciation / (ˈrɪɡəməˌrəʊl) / )? That’s how I say it, and evidently Blazek as well.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Dictionaries do not say “rigmarole” because that would make me wrong about the standard spelling, and obviously that could never happen.
Seriously, I’ve never heard nor read “rigmarole” until this very minute.
“Rigamarole” is apparently a chiefly American variant. “Rigmarole” derives from “ragman roll” (also three syllables), a collection of legal documents in which Scottish nobility and gentry swore fealty to Edward I of England.
“How to handle a woman?
There’s a way”, said the wise old man
“A way known by every woman
Since the whole rigmarole began.”
——-“How to Handle a Woman” from the musical Camelot
I also say “rigamarole,” but who am I to argue with King Arthur?
Powers has it, the three-syllable spelling is simply slavish respect to the British etymology. My “Compact OED” does not offer the medial “…a…” at all; as far as the Brits are concerned, “rigmarole” is the only known spelling. My “American Heritage” does offer both versions, but despite its prevalence in (U.S.) pronunciation, “rigamarole” is only offered as a variant, with a cross-reference to the supposed “primary” spelling. In addition to the etymology from “ragman rolls” (referring to that bit of British history), there’s also a theory that it refers to an accessory to an archaic game that has long been forgotten.
Dictionaries do not prescribe pronunciations, they merely report on what has been used. Theoretically, anyway. The compilers spend inordinate amounts of time searching through published materials to see how words have been spelled in the past, and report on that. Kind of like what the chatGPT AI thingies are doing now.
@ BillR – In good dictionaries there is always a balance between documenting “correct” usage and recording “actual” usage.† In this case I think at least the editors of my “American Heritage” dictionary have simply not investigated this word since the entry was originally recorded; instead, they’ve simply preserved a spelling (and pronunciation) that has since become uncommon (at least in American usage). Whether or not that pronunciation is still used in the UK is another question: perhaps narmitaj could weigh in with an opinion?
P.S. † – For instance, while I could understand that a dictionary might record the fact that some Americans pronounce “asked” as “akst“, or “important” as “impordant“, I would not trust any dictionary that categorized either one as “correct”.
Like Carl Fink, I’d never seen it without the second “a”. Interesting. Etymology seems to be a bit blurry; some say “The word comes from ‘ragman roll’, a game children played in the past” (including the OED), while others suggest “The origins of this are in Middle English rageman ‘document recording accusations or offenses,’ also ‘an accuser’ (late 13c.).”
Those are far enough apart that I might conclude that “origin unknown”.
Kilby/BillR: DEscriptive vs. PREscriptive has been an ongoing debate among linguists and lexicographers since the professions were invented. My dad was generally a DEscriptive linguist, but as Kilby notes, there are still norms. Humpty Dumpty’s approach is not the way to understanding!
I only know rigmarole, not rig-a-marole, in both spelling and pronunciation.
Spelling and pronunciation are only loosely connected in many English words, as we all know. I was having dinner with an English friend in Santa Barbara one day many years ago and she asked for “water” in English-person speech, something like a gentle “war-tah” perhaps. The server said “Whaddya want? Mustard?” and we had to say “Wodda” to be understood. But why isn’t water pronounced “waiter”, like pater, tater, cater, hater, later, etc.
I suppose the server didn’t often get asked for water as usually it comes without asking in the US.
Here in UK-land we have a posh supermarket chain called Waitrose, and on the side of some of their vans is the legend “From our store to your door”, which in six words manages to have three words that rhyme but have different spellings of their ends – store, your, door – and two words with similar spelling of the last three letters but pronounced differently – our, your.
In my vast experience, your either rhymes with fur or sounds like ewer, but never before yore. The British version seems to be yaw.
Let’s digress into grammar. I was in said posh supermarket earlier today, and when looking at the wines, I saw notices saying “Please ask an assistant if you require a full case”.
How on earth would they know, I wondered.
One for Pedanticus, I think…
@narmitage
Those lunatics at the English Spelling Society think they can fix that.
https://www.tourism-review.com/joke-of-the-week-news1808
@MikeP – If the assistant is a good salesman, he’d know that, of course, you need a full case. 😉
Is a rigamarole an Italian rigmarole?
There’s some common word, more often heard than “rigmarole”, that many people stick an extra syllable into, but I can’t think of it right now. I’ll come back when I find it.
Meanwhile, I have known people who pronounce “film” as “fillum” and “elm” as “ellum.”
The Irish are reputed to like to say “fillum”. And one word with a frequent extra syllabuble, due to an added ghost letter “i” is mischievous: “mischie-vi-ous”.
And yes, yaw and your and yore is much the same in much of British English, including mine… I personally speak the non-rhotic variety, where “speakers no longer pronounce /r/ in postvocalic environments”.
Mind you, I live in South West England, and, according to the Wikipedia article on Rhoticity in English, “The rhotic varieties of English include the dialects of South West England, Scotland, Ireland, and most of the United States and Canada” so many of the locals are in fact rhotic types.
Twenty-five miles from me is the biggish city of Bristol, whence Cabot set sail for North America. They have a quirk of adding an “L” to the ends of words that normally end in a vowel, like Americal, cinemal – “that’s a good ideal” when they mean “good idea”. You’d think then that “area” (pronounced areal) and aerial (the antenna thing) would sound the same, but according to this page, Bristolians maintain the distinction by dropping the L from aerial!
Bristol itself is an example of this added L, as its original name among the literate was Bruggestowe or Bristow but spoken with an L added by everyone, which people then solidified in the current spelling. Nowadays people pronounce it “Brissle” or “Brizzle” as often as anything else.
(I suppose pronouncing a final L should be lhoticity? Ho ho.)
Another of my comments held for spam?
Narmitaj, yes,it was in Spam (adjudicated by Akismet, which we don’t control beyond the option of turning it off), and has been pulled and restored. Sorry!
The extended pronunciation “mis-cheeve-ee-ous” was quite commonly heard in my youth and one of those perpetually disparaged in school. It was yoked with “hayne-ee-ous crimes”.
So they’d go nuke-you-ler on the hayne-ee-ous crime of being miss-cheeve-ee-ous?
I think it’s all a law of conservation: after all, the extra syllables from “comfortable” and “vegetable” have to go somewhere…
From the opera “Albert Herring” by Benjamin Britten:
Children: Albert’s Mum took a stick,
Whacked him on the thingmijig!
I always pronounced it thing-a-ma-jig. So do we Americans add syllables Brits leave out?
No, that wouldn’t explain airplane / aeroplane.
@narmitage “yaw and your and yore is much the same in much of British English, including mine” In mine ‘your’ and ‘yore’ sound the same, but ‘yaw’ is different, albeit subtly.
@larK – “the extra syllables from “comfortable” and “vegetable” have to go somewhere…” What extra syllables?
And don’t get me started on “Wednesday” – I’m the only person I know who pronounces the first ‘d’.
@Mark in Boston – it’s definitely ‘thing-a-ma-jig’. And “airplane / aeroplane” is easy – the first is wrong, the second is right. Simples. 😀
Fine, we’ll do the British version of syllable conservation: in order to power the souped up “aluminium” and “aeroplane”, you have to take syllables from “power” place names like “Magdelen College” and “Leominster”.
@larK – “the extra syllables from “comfortable” and “vegetable” have to go somewhere…” What extra syllables?
For many people, those are pronounced like “comfturble” and “vegtuble”.
If you are looking for a prime example of the “complete” pronunciation of “comfortable”, it’s hard to beat Madeline Kahn during her “date” with Sheriff Bart in “Blazing Saddles”.
It’s twue! It’s twue!