Word Watch: conserve

Yesterday (9/01/15), I was listening to NPR (infinite geyser of weird pronunciations!), and I heard a correspondent pronounce the word conserve as "conzerve." Repeatedly. It was in a story about the sage grouse and the Endangered Species Act, but that's probably not relevant. Because I'm filled with curiosity about Our World®, I started thinking about this. Was it just a tic, or can we say something more interesting about it?

Conserve is typically (as in, virtually always or maybe actually always) pronounced "conserve." On the surface, this word looks like it's composed of two morphemes (meaningful components): con + serve. After all, English is packed with words that start with con- (contain, conceal, control, confer, and on and on). Let's leave con- and conserve alone for a minute and look at other prefixes that appear to combine with other morphemes to make words in a similar way.

For instance, re-, pre-, and de-. Notice first that these prefixes can have easily understood, "transparent" meanings. re- (can) mean something like again or back, pre- (can) mean before, and de- (can) mean something like negate or rescind. Look what happens, though, when those prefixes are combined with certain one-syllable words starting with s:

re + side = reside
re + serve = reserve
re + sign = resign
re + sort = resort

pre + side = preside
pre + serve = preserve
(Why is there no presign or presort? Beats me.)

de + serve = deserve
de + sign = design
(Deside? Desort? Nope, I guess not.)

In each of these words, the verb that begins with an s-sound when the word stands alone begins with a z-sound when combined with these prefixes. Just like that strange "conzerve" above, right? Not so fast!

Reside, reserve, resign, and resort aren't always pronounced as "rezide," "rezerve," "rezign," and "rezort." When the prefix re- has its "transparent" meaning—that is, when the meaning of the whole word is an obvious, "mathematical" combination of the prefix and the verb—those verbs are pronounced with s-sounds, just like they are when the words stand alone as independent words.

That is, when reside means "to side something again" (or "to install siding again") it's pronounced "re+side" (with an s). When reserve means "to serve again" it's pronounced "re+serve" (with an s). When resign means "to sign again" it's pronounced "re+sign" (with an s). And when resort means "to sort again" it's pronounce "re+sort" (with an s). But in what sense does re- mean again in reside ("to live in")? Now that you mention it, in what sense does side mean side in that word? Where is the sense of signing in resign ("to step down from a position")? Where is the sense of serving in reserve ("to set aside")? They're not there. Those words only look like they're combinations of meaningful parts.

So! It's only when the prefix+verb combo has a meaning that can't be derived by looking at the meanings of its parts that the s-verbs are pronounced with z's. In other words, it's only where there's a distinction between a-word-made-by-combining-parts and a-word-that-only-looks-like-it's-a-combination-of-meaningful-parts that we can sometimes see those s-verbs pronounced with z's.

Let's return to "conzerve." It's clear to me that that word came about on the analogy of what happens to s-verbs when they're combined with prefixes like re-, pre-, and de-. But notice that con- (lacking as it does an easily understood, "transparent" meaning) doesn't lend itself to those tricky pairs (like pre+side vs preside, "to side something ahead of time" vs. "to supervise or lead proceedings"). There's no possible confusion between "conserve" and "conzerve," because con- doesn't really mean anything on its own. Notice also what kinds of things con- typically gets stuck onto. It often only appears to combine with verbs: contain, conceal, control, confer. Tain isn't an independent word. Nor are ceal, trol, and fer. Nor are many of the "words" con-'s cousin com- "attaches" to. Look at compel, compare, combine, compute. con-/com- just doesn't work the same way as re-, pre-, and de-.

And that's why "conzerve" is weird.

Update (9/11/15): I just heard (on NPR, naturally) "rezources." This appears to follow the story I tell above (except "resources" is a noun, so who knows?), where we expect to see a distinction between "resources" and "rezources." Even though the verb resource (meaning something other than "to source something again") would be pronounced "rezource," I still think the noun "rezource" is bizarre.