It is not yet
common, but such vulgarisms are apt to climb.
In times not quite so recent the word 'prophecy' has changed, not
indeed its stress, but the quantity of its final vowel. When Alford
wrote 'The Queen's English', every one lengthened the last vowel, as
in the verb, nor do I remember any other pronunciation in my boyhood.
Now the _N.E.D._ gives the short vowel only. Alford to his own
satisfaction accounted for the long vowel by the diphthong _ei_ of
the Greek. It is to be feared that his explanation would involve
'dynast[=y]' and 'polic[=y]', even if it did not oblige us to turn
'Pompey' into 'Pomp[=y]'. In this case it may be suspected that
the noun was assimilated to the verb, which follows the analogy of
'magnify' and 'multiply'. The voice of the people which now gives
us 'prophec[)y]' seems here to have felt the power of analogy and
assuredly will prevail.
_ON PROPER NAMES._
It is to be hoped that except in reading Latin and Greek texts we
shall keep to the traditional pronunciation of proper names as it
is enshrined in our poetry and other literature. We must continue to
lengthen the stressed penultimate vowel in Athos, Cato, Draco, Eros,
Hebrus, Lichas, Nero, Otho, Plato, Pylos, Remus, Samos, Titus, Venus,
and the many other disyllables wherein it was short in the ancient
tongues. On the other hand we shall shorten the originally long
stressed antepenultimate vowel in Brasidas, Euripides, Icarus,
Lavinia, Lucilius, Lydia, Nicias, Onesimus, Pegasus, Pyramus, Regulus,
Romulus, Scipio, Sisyphus, Socrates, Thucydides, and many more.
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