Grammar Girl here, I'm Nyan Fog Fog Fog, Your Friendly Guide to the English Language.

We talk about writing, history, rules, and other cool stuff.

Oppenheimer just won seven Oscars, including Best Picture,

and it has people talking about the word nuclear.

So we'll talk about that this week and I'll also talk about

camel case and a new online use that's made me warm up to it.

Here's a listener question.

Hi, along with the popularity now of the film about Robert Avondheimer,

we're hearing or rehearing because we haven't heard so much until recently,

the mispronunciation of the word nuclear as nuclear even by people who should know a lot better.

This drives me crazy. There are some other words who are mispronounced in a similar way.

For instance, the word jewelry is frequently pronounced as jewelry and the word realtor is often pronounced as realtor.

All of these make me absolutely cringe and I just wonder if there are any

others, not that I'm what really desires of hearing them, but this to me is a curiosity and why does anyone speak this way?

Thanks.

Great question.

So first, the word nuclear comes from nucleus, so it makes sense that it's pronounced the same

way. Nucleus comes straight from Latin where the word meant kernel but it goes all the

way back to Proto Indo-European to a root that means nut.

Edam online says the same root gives us the word nugget, which is sweet meat made of almonds and

other nuts.

So for a science fair or art project,

...