Recently I was in a conversation with someone, and I mentioned peridot. I pronounced it with the last syllable sounding like "dot." My companion corrected me, "No, it's per-i-DOE." I had heard it pronounced this way in the past by others, and I was curious as to its true pronunciation. As a gem dealer, I obviously want to make sure I am saying it right, so I looked it up.

What I found were a lot of websites saying that, despite people's insistence for pronouncing it "per-i-dot," it is actually pronounced "per-i-doe." Then I looked it up in a couple of dictionaries.

Funny. Every single dictionary had "per-i-dot" and the primary pronunciation, and "per-i-doe" as a secondary pronunciation! So now I am trying to figure out where all those people who insist it's supposed to be "per-i-doe" got their information. It sure wasn't from any dictionary. I can only assume that, since "peridot" is of French origin, people think its pronunciation must automatically be what it would have been in French. But apparently it is indeed pronounced with the "dot." This is an example of the misinformation that is so readily available on the internet; that anyone can "publish" anything they like, and it will eventually become some sort of strange fact. So many websites say it is NOT pronounced as it looks, yet I cannot find a single dictionary that supports this claim.

If anyone knows the origin of the "per-i-doe" pronunciation, please let me know. In the meantime I will stick with the dictionaries and call it "per-i-dot!"