This debate is driving me insane.
I decided to start drinking every time I heard the word “maverick” or the reeeeeally irritating mispronunciation of the word nuclear as “nuke you lar.”
Now my beer is empty.
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Hello there. I'm Jessie.
I am a wordsmith, writer, editor, Spanish translator, and international fish shipper.
Based in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, I am often found in tropical foreign lands.
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“Nuke-u-lar” is (or was, anyway) strategic air command jargon for “nuclear”. (Jesus on a stick, having to write “nuclear.” when I mean “nuclear”. is totally fucking frustrating. I think I’ll go back and change it. There. Much better… Why is it too much to ask that the rules of punctuation make some kind of motherfucking sense? Jesus-fuck I hate this country sometimes.) Ahem.
So anyway, if you’ve ever seen one of those old SAC generals get interviewed, you will notice that they all say “nuke-u-lar”. It’s also possible that the jargon pronunciation has a different meaning than the everyday one, in that it seems to imply that you are looking forward to dropping some nuke-u-lar bombs on them dirty sons of bitchin’ commies. “Nuclear” is J. Robert Oppenheimer quoting the Bhagavad Gita at the Trinity site. “Nuke-u-lar” is Slim Pickens riding the bomb down at the end of Dr. Strangelove. It’s got more cowboy swagger.
Given the choice, I prefer “nuclear” because I prefer a leader that would hesitate to use the bomb.