What is the correct way to pronounce "router"?
Also, what does the ‘fi’ in ‘wifi’ stand for?
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row (rhymes with wow) ter
I assume it’s wide fidelity; a take-off on high fi.
The “fi” in wifi doesn’t stand for anything, apparently. The name was coined as a play on “HiFi”. While the “Fi” in HiFi does stand for fidelity, in wifi it’s just there to make the rhyme.
(source)
I trust leo, and they say “rooter”. Maybe that’s a British vs. US – thing?
Wi-fi does not mean anything at all – not an acronym. The tagline “The standard for wireless fidelity” was added on after the catchy new word was created, along with a fake etymology.
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@janbb
Thank you.
even if you turned out to be wrong
In what part? The wi-fi was pretty much an assumption that was the same as the explanation @thorninmud sourced..
And the pronunciation of router is right for the States.
(I’ll untwist my knickers now.)
@ragingloli Aha – I see you only want Britspeak in your details. I bow before your superior brain and take my bruised American ego away.
Bruised and twisted for so long it ain’t true.
I would say ROWter.
If I was talking about a route, I’d say root.
And I do think it’s a regional thing. People say Rowter in Australia too.
And people say ROWter in NZ too, and route is also pronounced root.
Well, according to this article (and a few others I found, but this is the only one that seems to link properly) there were no Brits involved in the creative process, therefore it would seem that the Australians would be the ones to pronounce it correctly, and as @Earthbound_Misfit has told us, that pronunciation is “ROWter”.
In terms of the way to get somewhere or the name of a road, we can say “Root” or Rowte” and both are accepted in America but I’ve only heard “routers’ being pronounced “ROWter” as I mentioned. My Brit husband who was a woodworker said it that way too; that may have been because he was in the States though.
And “Roto Rooter” is a whole different business.
I have never heard anyone pronounce “router” as “rooter”! That is a new one for me. I only hear “rowter” (like wowter, as @janbb noted), wherever I go.
Only my Italian grandfather pronounced it as “rooter” and I always corrected him. I guess he was right, too!
THING-a-mah-jig
And the “Fi” in WiFi = Frustration Inducer
Interesting. According to the Oxford Dictionary (a.k.a. Brit-speak), there are two definitions of ‘router’:
1.A power tool with a shaped cutter, used in carpentry for making grooves for joints, decorative mouldings, etc. pronounced ˈraʊtə (or row-ter)
2. A device which forwards data packets to the appropriate parts of a computer network. pronounced ruːtə (or roo-ter)
Source
Router has different pronunciations, just as its root word “route”
Router rhymes with doubter.
I’m American and I say router like the word doubter. I say it that way for both the tool and computer thingy. I have never heard it said rooter.
Route to describe a road I say both route like doubt and route like root. I hear both in America. Some roads have a tradition of being pronounced root. Like Route 66. I say that root 66, but usually call other routes with the other pronunciation. Interesting that word sounds correct and normal to me both ways. I never thought about it.
I would have assumed the fi in wifi is fidelity, but I really never thought about it. Wireless Fidelity would be have been my guess if I had to guess. Purely a guess though.
@gailcalled I pronounce the tool as “doubter” also. I always just assumed the name Roto-Rooter was one of those deliberate corporate misspellings/mispronunciations meant to irritate people into remembering their product.
I always thought Roto-Rooter was a play on words of the concept of routing out the roots in a pipeline.
“In 1933, Samuel Blanc created a funny-looking sewer cleaning machine from a 1/6 HP Maytag washing machine motor, roller skate wheels and 3/8” cable to turn the blades. The device used a combination of special blades or “knives” to cut tree roots out of sewer lines. No digging was required. A year later, Sam’s wife Lettie christened the prototype the “Roto-Rooter.”
Source
And the fact that it is spelled differently makes it a whole different animal.
@janbb Ah, so it is named for the roots? That’s interesting.
The tool called a router in our home was a type of saw – but I have always assumed that the “rooter” in Roto-Rooter was originally called a router as well. Not even sure why, now.
@janbb But only in “the colonies”.
@gailcalled I don’t understand your comment. Roto-Rooter is spelled rooter. A router is a specific type of tool. How does rooter play into the Q. It’s pretty obvious how to pronounce that.
@JLeslie because it’s SPELLED ROU-ter, but apparently the aliens, like @ragingloli, pronounce it “roo-ter.”
Roto-Rooter is spelled rooter.
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