A PRONUNCIATION CONUNDRUM

Friday evening, we were, along with our friends Debra and Dennis, wandering around one of the new Planned Living Environments that has sprouted in our area. It’s one of those places that features medium- and high-rise apartments and/or condos, along with a walk-around Outdoor Shopping and Restaurant area. It’s fine for walking around, that is, as long as it isn’t 90°F outside, or if it’s not raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock, as it is wont to do hereabouts.

In theory, you could live here without a car, as long as you didn't mind schlepping your groceries from the Super Target.

The place carries the somewhat oxymoronic name of Perimeter Center. I mean, if it’s on the perimeter, it cannot very well be in the center...and vice versa. I rest my case.

But it is pleasant enough. There’s a High-End Home Theatre store, where you can plunk down a few large and get a huge high-definition flat-screen television set. Or spend a few more simoleons - 140 thousand of ’em - and get a complete home theatre, with reclining leather seats, a six-foot wide screen projection TV, and a simulacrum of the Milky Way built into the ceiling to keep your mind occupied if the film gets boring. All the better for you to enjoy the fine artists of Modern Cinema, like Jar Jar fucking Binks: “Meesa cannot afford this Home Theatre shit!”

There is also a furniture place - Ridiculously Expensive Furnishings R Us - where they have a whole section featuring the tropical-themed products of Thomas Bahommas. You can buy furniture that looks like it was carted here directly from the old Repulse Bay Hotel in Hong Kong, and with it, bed linens that look remarkably like my tropical shirt collection. All of this stuff seemingly is for people who either own a beach house or who wish to pretend they do.

As we were checking out all of this Fine Merchandise, I noticed a Chaise Longue. Not one of those cheesy poolside ones; this was intended to be part of a richly-appointed bedroom.

The Chaise Longue is a fascinating article. It’s French, appropriately enough, for “Long Chair,” which describes it to a “T.” And, if you speak the language of the Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys, you know that it is pronounced “shezz LONG.”

But somehow, at least in the American Northeast, “Chaise Longue” somehow got corrupted to “Chaise Lounge,” and people started calling it a “SHAYZ lownj.” That’s what I grew up with...and it makes my teeth hurt to hear it nowadays.

So here’s the question, Esteemed Ones: What do you call one of them Honkin’ Long Chairs?