6 APRIL 1912, Page 17

[To THE EDITOR Or THE "SPECTATOR. "] Sin,—." Murray's Dictionary "—I

do not know anything about the " Concise Oxford Dictionary "—pronounces idea quite rightly, a trissyllable with no "r." Does not " Scot" know the story of the professor and his class P The professor had said : " Do not say, I saw ra comet yesterday.' Some young ladies are not free from errors of that sort." To which a "young lady" replied: " I am astonished, professor. I had no idea rof it." In the eighteenth century idea was most emphatically a trissyIlable and real a dissyllable. But then words in conversation, and, I think, in literature, have lost, or are losing, a syllable. I should be glad to be proved wrong. Is not really , except by purists, pronounced rear-ty P Hood makes it rhyme with dearly. Crabbe pronounces real as a