I just found out I've been pronouncing "Victuals" incorrectly for my entire life.
Granted, it's not a word I use routinely, but what the heck?
How do you guys say Victuals? (before googling it)?
I honestly thought victuals and vittles had different meanings.
Same here.
There was a small diner near where I lived in Georgia called "Vittles". We used to see Newt Gingrich there on Sunday mornings. It was really unhealthy food.
There used to be "tender vittles " cat food too. I was aware of "Victuals" from books but didn't realize they were pronounced the same.
I have never actually used either word, but I assumed "victuals" was to "vittles" as "I am going to" was to "I'mgonna".
It is the same word with the same meaning.
This happens sometimes with less common, old words that are spelled very differently than they are pronounced. Usually one version takes over eventually, but not in this case.
Back in the day when illiteracy was common, certain words were known only by sound in some populations and in writing in others.
The word "Apron" is a good example. It was always "napron" because it hangs from the nape of your neck. However, if you say "a napron" it sounds like "an apron" and aprons weren't used much by the reading class, so the phonetic version took over and the original disappeared, and then when everyone learned to read, the more common version "apron" was accepted and transcribed and accepted as the correct version.
Same with Pea Soup. There was no singular of "pea" in cooking, it was always "peas," hence the alternative name "peas porridge." It was always Peas Soup in writing, but the class of folks that made and ate Peas Soup mostly learned it by sound, and by sound "Peas Soup" sounds like "Pea Soup."
Victuals would have been known by writing by a certain class and "vittles" would have been how the illiterate class thought it was spelled when they learned to read and write.
But chances are that the term victuals/vittles was already phasing out of common use by then, so neither side took over because it was use infrequently enough to not need "one true spelling." The uses of each may have also stayed class divided for a very long time, and from what I understand, the "vittles" version persists largely because it was transported to America and took hold as the norm there.
Which is again a manifestation product of class division of language.
Language was much more variable before we had almost everyone reading the same form of language in books and hearing the same form of language on radio and TV.
We don't have a ton of extant examples of multiple forms of a word surviving because if the word is common enough, one form usually "wins" and becomes what everyone thinks is the "correct" one, even if that version comes from an error, like "apron."
