Patent and Latent ambiguity

Never heard anyone pronounce pay-tent.

However, Merriam-Webster shows a mainly British utterance with a long a.

here....latent- long a patent short a... however...

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> I've always pronounced latent with a long a sound when discussing this particular ambiguity, however, when pronouncing patent ambiguities I've used the short a sound. Has anyone who frequents this board pronounced patent with a long a sound?

Sure, always. That's the normal pronunciation in American English if used in the sense of "obvious" as in "patently absurd" or "patently ambiguious". Short "a" if meaning a license granted by the government to protect a novel design for a flux gate capacitor for a time machine or a pyramid that sharpens razor blades particularly quickly.

> Sure, always. That's the normal pronunciation in American English if used in the sense of "obvious" as in "patently absurd" or "patently ambiguious". Short "a" if meaning a license granted by the government to protect a novel design for a flux gate capacitor for a time machine or a pyramid that sharpens razor blades particularly quickly.

Until today I never had doubt in my mind as to the pronunciation of the word, but as is usually the case, the contrary could be shown...even if wrong. 🙂

I don't think I've ever heard anyone pronounce the word "patent" with a short "a" when used in the sense of "open or obvious" as in the phrase "patent ambiguity" as opposed to a license granted as in the phrase "patent medicine".

> I've always pronounced latent with a long a sound when discussing this particular ambiguity, however, when pronouncing patent ambiguities I've used the short a sound. Has anyone who frequents this board pronounced patent with a long a sound?

I learned to pronounce ambiguities as pay-tent and lay-tent with long vowel sounds. A pa-tent (short vowel sound) is a document transferring title from public to private.

JBS

:good: "pay-tent" ambiguity is the correct pronunciation

> :good: "pay-tent" ambiguity is the correct pronunciation

Yep. That's the way Ted Madson pronounces it in his audio courses on boundary law.

Thank you all. I guess you just don't know what you don't know until you ask.

Never trust the British

There is a very old story about a couple of Brit's attempting to decipher the meaning of the word "category" as they had never heard of such a word before. As they work through it they come up with the thought that it involves a cat, a 'e cat at that. And apparently it is gory. Suddenly the little light bulb turns on above the head of one of the Brits and he declares, "It's a bloody tom cat."