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Leave it to HN to explain grammar, some history and a bit of etymology in response to a childish joke comment. And, that's why this place is great.
by grawprog 5y ago
Leave it to HN to explain grammar, some history and a bit of etymology in response to a childish joke comment.
And, that's why this place is great.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y agoHope I can contribute, because this is actually very interesting. According to this [1], the most common American pronunciation was closer to "Your anus" (accent on the A in anus) until 1986, when a space probe was flying by and news casters thought weeks of that would get too "giggly", so they deliberately started pronouncing it "Urine us" (accent on the first syllable). [1] https://www.dollarshaveclub.com/content/story/anus-urine-us-rebranding-uranus https://www.dollarshaveclub.com/content/story/anus-urine-us-...
- grawprog 5y agoThank you. That was amusing to read and I never actually realized there was so much about the pronunciation, I've heard a few different ones. but I always took it for regional dialect differences not something done intentionally. I may have sounded sarcastic, but I was genuinely serious, I really do enjoy the interesting factoids spawned by sometimes the most innocuous comments on HN. HN really does have a lot of people knowledgeable about a huge range of things.