I'm sorry, I hate to nitpick but I hate the ad-hoc pronunciation "system" even more.

"it turns out it's pronounced PLOOM-yule"

Would there be a difference between PLOOM-yule and PLUME-yool? I especially hate the ad-hoc "oo" because I never know when it represents the sound in "hook" and when the sound in "hoop". Moreso in international fora where I have to worry about British and American pronunciation.

So in this case is it /ˈpluːmyuːl/ or /ˈplʊmyuːl/? (SAMPA /"plu:myu:l/ or /"plUmyu:l/) Or to use a more American (non-IPA) system, plo͞om'yo͞ol or plo͝om'yo͞ol? (Unfortunately, Unicode's combining double macron and breve are not widely supported yet).

Interestingly, in Shenandoah, I heard hook pronounced to rhyme with hoop often enough to notice.

Also, it occurred to me to wonder whether you had read Nicholson Baker last fall, when I was tearing through his books. I wasn't too impressed by the libraries one, but I love his novels.

Door, foot or food, that is the question. The first is out, of course, and as for the other two, I'd think it wouldn't matter much as long as it's an u-sound: Merriam-Webster Online transcribe it as French-sounding /'plü-(")myü(&)l/ in their strange Sampa-derivative.

Unfortunately, its counterpart in French botanical terminology, radicule, apparently has been anglicised into radicle. Imagine what beautiful passages could have been written about plumules and radicules!

Unfortunately, its counterpart in French botanical terminology, radicule, apparently has been anglicised into radicle. Imagine what beautiful passages could have been written about plumules and radicules!

Well Chris, SOED gives both "radicule" and "radicle" as equivalent terms corresponding to French "radicule", so we await your purple pen's outpourings. For our "plumule" we have also "gemmule", and French has both of these too.

English has also "radicel" as an equivalent to "radicle" in the relevant sense, but French "radicelle" means something subtly different: Ramification de la racine principale (Le Petit Robert).

English has also has, or had, "rostellum". For this SOED gives, among other meanings:

1 Bot.[dagger]a The radicle of a seed. M18–L19.

Radicool!

Andrew: Thanks for the heads-up (I should have noticed the ambiguity and gone with PLUME-yule); I've added one of your suggestions to disambiguate it. However, I'm not about to stop using ad hoc respellings. I am not writing primarily for linguists, and most laymen are baffled by scientific transcriptions. But I will make a greater effort to avoid this kind of problem.

Andrew: Thanks for the heads-up (I should have noticed the ambiguity and gone with PLUME-yule); I've added one of your suggestions to disambiguate it. However, I'm not about to stop using ad hoc respellings. I am not writing primarily for linguists, and most laymen are baffled by scientific transcriptions. But I will make a greater effort to avoid this kind of problem.