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-acea, -aceae

What is the right pronunciation?

What is the difference?

gomadeng
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  • Is this related to botany? – Michael Harvey May 16 '22 at 10:28
  • yes, in case of '-aceae', but zoology in case of '-acea' – gomadeng May 16 '22 at 10:32
  • I just spent a couple of minutes searching the full OED, but I can't find even a single word there that ends with *-aceae. Etymonline says In botany, the suffix is -aceae, from the fem. plural of -aceus, forming orders or families of plants (Rosaceae, etc.)* But the OED only has *rosacea*, which is a completely different word. – FumbleFingers May 16 '22 at 11:52
  • Merriam-Webster: rosaceae Ro·​sa·​ce·​ae | \ -āsēˌē \ . . . . rosacea ro·​sa·​cea | \ rō-ˈzā-sh(ē-)ə – FumbleFingers May 16 '22 at 11:57
  • Incidentally I do not agree with Merriam-Webster so there may be dialect differences here. – mdewey May 16 '22 at 12:27
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    These are not native suffixes, but rather derived from Greek or Latin. Moreover, they are used within technical terms in specialized fields. How they are actually pronounced by specialists in the field is probably best answered by the specialists themselves or by a technical dictionary. – Jeff Morrow May 16 '22 at 12:43
  • My dictionary(one of asian ones) says: [éisiì:] for '-aceae' which is used for family names in botany, and [éiʃiə] for '-acea' used for class/order names in zoology. – gomadeng May 18 '22 at 09:33
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    Whilst this question has its faults, it shows no research effort and asks about pronunciation which we don't do here "Basic questions on spelling, meaning or pronunciation are off-topic as they should be answered using a dictionary." It's worth pointing out that none of our regular contributors can find satisfactory answers in their dictionary research. Hence I'm voting to leave this open for now in case someone can provide an authoritative answer. – Peter Jennings May 23 '22 at 09:53

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