yes, but how do you pronounce that damn word?

I don’t know. I suppose you could make some onomatopoetic zzt-zzy and hope to get away with it.

Once again, great links Karen. I don’t know how you find this stuff.

Anyway, you got me curious so I dug around the web to find some tmesis examples:

If on the first, how heinous e’er it be,
To win thy after-love I pardon thee.
—Shakespeare, Richard II 5.3.34-35

His income-tax return, he remarked, was the “most rigged-up marole” he’d ever seen.
—Frederic Packard

In two words, im possible.
—Samuel Goldwyn

Thanks for the examples, but I can’t figure out where the tmesi are. Duh! Esp. the Shakespeare one.

“heinous” interrupts “howe’er”:

If on the first, how heinous e’er it be,
To win thy after-love I pardon thee.

“the most rigged-up marole” (rigmarole)

hmm… an onomatopoetic variation could make it sound like scissor gee…

buzzz

syzygy is pronounced ziggy, as in stardust.

Finally, an answer!

hey, karen, michael’s just kidding.

or at least i think it must be a joke.

ziggy? no way.

its pronounced sis-er-gee.

He sounded serious. I hope he comes back to say which one of us is right.

This is embarrassing. I would have bet money that “ziggy” was the correct pronunciation. At least I was confused by something esoteric, AS Byatt’s character named Ziggy in her book Babel Tower.

“sizz-uh-gee” is the correct pronunciation, sez three or four dictionaries. Unless they pronounce it differently in Britain.

Michael

in britain, like most words, syzygy is pronounced “wanker”.

considering that they are both nouns, i guess you could say that the british pronunciation is partially correct.

If a syzygy is a fusion, and syzygy is pronounced “wanker,” then I guess it means a two-hander.

Politely,
Michael

un-freaking-believable

personally, i feel that this is one of those situations where less is actually more… unless you’re a bloody syzygist of course.

extremely polite,
elijah