Category Archives: Words

“Scone”: History and Pronunciation

“So, thanks to all at once and to each one,
Whom we invite to see us crowned at Scone.”
–W. Shakespeare, Macbeth, ~1606


[no entry for scone] J. Nott, The Cooks and Confectioners Dictionary, 1723*


[no entry for scone] –S. Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language, 1768*


SCONE, or SCOON, a royal palace and town of Scotland, in the county of Perth. It is the place where the kings of Scotland were usually crowned, and is 40 miles No of Edinburgh.
–J. Barclay, A Complete and Universal English Dictionary, 1792



–F.H. Vizetelly, A Desk-book of Twenty-five Thousand Words Frequently Mispronounced, 1917*


Harold [Edward Monro] looked at me sadly. “We pronunce [sic] it ‘skun,’ ” he said.
–L. Untermeyer, From Another World: The Autobiography of Louis Untermeyer, 1939


scone (skon) n. a small, flat round plain cake
The Simon & Schuster Young Readers’ Illustrated Dictionary, 1984


“scone” shown to rhyme with “stone”
–B.G. Redfield, Capricorn Rhyming Dictionary, 1986

Shibboleth

Judges 12:5-6
Young’s Literal Translation

5 And Gilead captureth the passages of the Jordan to Ephraim, and it hath been, when [any of] the fugitives of Ephraim say, `Let me pass over,’ and the men of Gilead say to him, `An Ephramite thou?’ and he saith, `No;’

6 that they say to him, `Say, I pray thee, Shibboleth (שבלת);’ and he saith, `Sibboleth,’ (סבלת) and is not prepared to speak right — and they seize him, and slaughter him at the passages of the Jordan, and there fall at that time, of Ephraim, forty and two chiefs.