Earlywood: Things that Get Mispronounced in Woodworking

Publisher’s note: Welcome to Earlywood, a free weekly excerpt from one of the thousands of pieces I’ve written since 1996. Sometimes, it’s from a magazine article. Or a book. Or (in this case) a blog post published in 2013. Each entry has been updated or annotated with some modern context or point of view. Enjoy!

A “Robo” bench I built with the help of “Lee-Nelson” planes.

When you learn woodworking through reading – books, magazines and websites – you often have no idea how certain words are pronounced. And so when you finally encounter fellow woodworkers in the flesh and have a conversation, there can be a language barrier.

Here are some of the common mispronounced words I have encountered at woodworking shows and classes.

1. Roubo pronounced as “Robo,” as in “Robocop.” It makes me chuckle every time because I think of what a boring movie “Roboben…