Pronounced: em-PIR-ee-uhl (alt 1: em-PIE-ree-uhl; alt 2: em-puh-REE-uhl; alt 3: em-pie-REE-uhl)
Note: Wow, I don’t think I’ve run across a word with four different pronunciations
Yesterday’s phrase
The phrase gung ho, as most people know, means “extremely eager and enthusiastic”
First usage
This phrase came into English in the 1940s
Background / Comments
It is the background that made me include this word. It was adopted by US Marine Corps officer Evans Carlson and used as training slogan. It comes from the Chinese word gonghe, an acronym from the Gongye Hezuoshe (the Chinese Industrial Cooperative Society). The word gonghe was understood to mean “work together”. Evans Carlson liked the sound of it and thus used it for a slogan, from where is made its way into general English usage as our phrase.
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 