Let us start this week’s exploration with a little question. How do you pronounce the word ‘nuclear’, as in, a ‘nuclear reactor’ or ‘nuclear fission’?

As I become more interested in languages, I have become more attentive to the patterns people pronounce certain words. There are two distinct patterns people tend to say the word ‘nuclear’, either as ‘new-klee-ar’ or ‘nu-kyu-lar’. Regardless of the variant of English used, most notably British and American English, one would hear both types of pronunciations used, albeit with slight phonetic differences like the rhotic-r in most American English accents, and the pronunciation of the first syllable ‘nu’.

The ‘nu-kyu-lar’ pronunciation has got its own rough phonetic spelling, ‘nucular’ , and is commonly used to refer to this pronunciation of the word ‘nuclear’. This has gained attention due to its use by some United States Presidents, notably, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, and Dwight D. Eisenhower, which has led to some news articles speculating their tendency to use the ‘nucular option’. But it is also notable in speakers in the United Kingdom and Canada as well. Looking at YouTubers pronouncing it today, there appears to be a strong preference for ‘new-klee-ar’ in educational channels. Verisatium, Tom Scott, Kitboga, and Simon Whistler are examples of channels which lean towards using ‘new-klee-ar’, but the only example I could find where a YouTuber uses ‘nucular’ is RTGame.

While first published in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1943, the pronunciation ‘nucular’ has likely been in existence for a decade or more by that time. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary suggested that ‘nucular’ was widespread in academics, lawyers, and politicians, people commonly associated to have received higher levels of education. But several dictionaries have criticised this pronunciation as erroneous or as mispronunciations of the ‘new-klee-ar option’.

So, why did ‘nucular’ come to be? Historically, it seems to be juxtaposed between high education levels and a mispronunciation, appearing quite ironic for an educated person to mispronounce, intentionally or not, a word like ‘nuclear’.

The first, and most prominent theory is called ‘metathesis’. This is the phenomenon where two syllables in a word are switched around in order. This type of metathesis is called local or adjacent metathesis. You might encounter this type of metathesis in some mispronunciations of words like ‘anemone’ (as ‘anenome‘) and ‘foliage’ (as ‘foilage’). In the case of ‘nuclear’, when realised as ‘new-klee-ar’, speakers may be prone to adopt ‘nu-kyu-lar’ through metathesis, as the ‘klee-ar’ ending is not quite favourable to them.

Another theory applies a more morphological perspective. In science, one would encounter the noun-adjective pairs like particle-particular, and molecule-molecular. These adjectives tend to end with ‘kyu-lar’. By applying this pattern to the nucleus, the noun to the adjective ‘nuclear’, this results in the pronunciation ‘nucular’.

But these theories seem to struggle in explaining the historical trend of educated people being more likely to be users of ‘nucular’. One other theory, proposed by the late linguist and writer Geoffrey Nunberg, suggested that the pronunciation ‘nucular’ was preferred by scientists and politicians to convey a more authoritative speech. It applies a more sociolinguistic approach to answering this question, as usage of ‘nuclear’ versus ‘nucular’ could convey different tones or connotations. He argued that when used only to refer to nuclear weapons, ‘nucular’ was interpreted to have a more authoritative connotation, hence its preference by politicians, or people who hold high political positions. If ‘nucular’ was used to refer to both nuclear weapons and nuclear families, Nunberg argued that it conveyed a more pretentious undertone, as if the speaker wanted to sound more folksy. This perspective could explain the historical pattern of the usage of this pronunciation, which the other theories seem to fail to do effectively.

Even though the ‘nucular’ pronunciation has struggled to gain a status as an alternative pronunciation of the word ‘nuclear’, it has still left its legacy in colloquial speech. You might be familiar with the word ‘nuke’, a clipping of the word ‘nuclear’ and to refer to a nuclear weapon, or the deployment of a nuclear weapon. Linguists suggest that the word ‘nuke’ might have come from the ‘nucular’ pronunciation, as opposed to the ‘new-klee-ar’ one. Nunberg, for example, is reported to use ‘nucular’ when he was referring to nukes. If we compare this with the morphological approach, as ‘nuke-cular’ , we could see more support for that theory.

So how do you pronounce ‘nuclear’? Feel free to answer the poll below!