[Info-vax] Long uptime cut short by Hurricane Sandy

[Richard B. Gilbert]

On 2/15/2013 4:00 PM, Bob Koehler wrote:
>   In article
>   <3edb6d1f-62fb-4263-8005-fbde774ca26b at fn10g2000vbb.googlegroups.com>,
>    Rich Jordan <jordan at ccs4vms.com> wrote:
>
>> Our university English lit prof told the likely apocryphal tale of her
>> English professor telling his students that after long and careful
>> study, he had determined that the only word in the English language
>> where s followed by a vowel was pronounced as 'sh' was sumac.
>>
>> One of his students asked, 'Professor, are you sure?'
>
>     This is more interesting than it may seem.  I had to check that
>     Merriam Webster claims sumac starts with the "sh" sound.  After
>     living in Iowa, Louisiana, Virginia, Illinois, Michigan, NJ,
>     and Maryland, I've never once heard it pronounced that way.
>

My dictionaries "The American Heritage Dictionary" and Webster's
New Universal Unabridged Dictionary say "sumac" and also "sumach".