misenunciate

present singular third person misenunciates · participle present misenunciating · participle past misenunciated · past misenunciated

1. To mispronounce due to poor articulation.

   What common words are usually misenunciated because of failure to open the mouth properly?

   1935, Howard Roscoe Driggs, Living English: For Junior High Schools - Volume 1, page 151

   3 more examples

   The training is not primarily intended for children who merely mispronounce or misenunciate or express themselves inaptly, unidiomatically and incorrectly for reasons other than defects of speech.

   1924, John Edward Wallace Wallin, The Education of Handicapped Children, page 124

   In the method recommended here, when the sounds in nonsense combinations are larned no act of attention is required to repeat them, and when once a sequence of sounds which are used as part of a word is easily enunciated it slips into the formerly misenunciated word and makes it correct without any conscious effort on the part of the pupil.

   1948, Harry Joseph Heltman, Handbook for Remedial Speech, page 110

   It has been my experience that South Africans misenunciate more than half of these vowel sounds.

   1996, G. Stewart, C. de Kock, M. Smit, Communicating for the Professions, page 97