Prusik Knot pronunciation

[Ian]

How do you pronounce “Prusik?”

In the Army, they taught me to say it prew-sick.  It was pronounced this way in several schools including Air Assault and Rappel Master where you get tested heavily on knots.

Post ETS, a classmate in my WFR class looked at me cross eyed when I said prew-sick and said that she thought it was supposed to be pronounced pruh-sick.

Whatever.  Time marches on.  In the civilian world, I now mostly hear pruh-sick.

So I’m bored and I finally decide to Google it.  Hung jury.  I see some dictionary references that pronounce it pruh-sick and I’ve clicked on other websites that have an audio track that pronounce it prew-sick.

So I make a decision to pronounce it however Karl Prusik would pronounce it.  Well that doesn’t help much either.  Turns out that Prusik is a Polish name but that Karl Prusik was an Austrian of Czech decent.

Dammit!  We can’t even get brits and yankees to agree on how to pronounce aluminum, now I have to figure out if Karl Prusik pronounced his last name as it would be pronounced in Poland or if he put a German spin on it?  I’ve heard a couple variations of my first name.  Most I’ve met pronounce it Ee-en but I do meet the occasional Eye-an.  My world is beginning to crumble.

Fine.  I’ll go with the Polish version then.  Anyone here speak Polish?

[Iago Vazquez]

No Polish spoken here. But my wife and I found your post highly entertaining :)

Also, starting to regret not choosing to spell our son’s name “Iain” to cover our bases ;D

[Jerry Adams]

I’ve always heard pruh-sick – I must be in the civilian world…

[Ian]

Iago,

I work with an Eoin.  That’s the nice thing about anglicizing names from other languages is that you get some artistic license although from what I’ve read, Eoin is the original gangster.

Jerry,

F-ing civilian world.  Perhaps I’m looking at this all wrong and should approach this from the spirit world.  However, I get drug tests at work so I’m fairly limited on how I can actually cross over to the spirit world and still have a job afterwards.  Perhaps fermented Mr. Pibb will get ‘er done?

I fear some may not catch the reference so…

[Bruce Tolley]

I always thought it was some Germanic eastern European name and pronounced the first syllable in Prusik to rhyme with “brew,” the verb to make “beer” either German, Austrian, Czech, or Polish.

[BlackHatGuy]

Not sure what all the discussion is about.

For the last time, it’s pronounced prusik.

That wasn’t so hard, was it….

[Clue M]

I think it’s Proosihk or pruhsik depending on if the tension is mostly vertical or horizontal.

[Matthew / BPL]

6′ 8″ German dude I know says prew-sick but I’m a pruh-sick guy.

[JCH]

I vote prew-sick…at least that’s how I heard it pronounced both times I heard someone pronounce it :)

[Matthew / BPL]

I move we call it a triple wrapped sliding knot thingie.

[Link .]

.How to Pronounce Prusik .

[Link .]

.Oxford Dictionary .

[JCH]

…Bi-directional triple wrapped sliding knot thingie…as opposed to uni-directional (klemhiest) :)

[Ian]

Anna,

I looked at those two sources yesterday.  YouTube suggest Prew-sick and Oxford says Pruh-sick.

I’d normally defer to Oxford Dictionary but oddly enough, they pronounce aluminum the American way. Cambridge dictionary seems to drop the ball altogether

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/aluminium

I worked in Pulaski, NY, which was named after General Pulaski.  You’d think that they would pronounce it Pu-lass-ski but alas, they pronounced it Puh-lass-sky.  Of course this is the same state that pronounces Chaumont, sha-mow.

I think the strongest argument at the moment is to pronounce Prusik the way it would be in Poland, which I *think* is prew-sick.

Is there a Polish person in the house?

[Link .]

I listed both because I liked that they contradict each other :)

[Jeffs Eleven]

Take it to Chaff, Fellas… and Link!.

LOL I’ve wanted to say that for years!!  …the good old days.

[Ian]

Chaff is taking this mother over!

There are days when BPL amazes me, and today is one of those days.  A message from a native speaker who gave me permission to post this here.

Prew-sick it is.

“Hi,
unfortunately I can’t reply to Your topic, but would like to dispel Your doubts, since I’m native polish speaker. So, Poles (and Germans as well) say it: ”prew-sick”. The ”R” is pronounced hard and short, just the way The Count Count speaks (the counting vampire from Sesame Street).

Yours
Andrzej Ambroz

P.S. ”Puh-wah-ski” became ”Puh-lass-ski” just because there’s no ”ł” in english…”

[BlackHatGuy]

Told ya.

[Jerry Adams]

pruh-sick

[Franco Darioli]

Did you know that Mr Everest pronounced his name as Eve-rest ?

Eve as in the female name.

[Ken Thompson]

Yes, and Jekyll rhymes with treacle

[Franco Darioli]

Yes, Jee kull (something like that…)

[Bob Moulder]

I always thought it was Pruh-sik but if someone pronounced it Prew-sik I think I could figure it out from context alone. :^)

[Ian]

Fran-cod-airy-oly,

That’s how I pronounce it.  For example, here in the NW you have Mount Ad-am-ess, Mount Bah-keer, Mount Sha-stuh-hah, Mount Ra-eennee-are, Mount Suht-he-lens, and Mount Hood.

[Steve S]

finally a discussion where I’m an expert!  Well, after 35 + years of technical climbing, and of using that knot over and over, I can tell you with a high degree of certainty that it is indeed pronounced prusik!

And depending on which country the climber comes from, lol, they say it different!  Usually we say pruh-sik, and the Euros say prew-sik

 

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