Kate from Arlington, Massachusetts, and her boyfriend disagree about how to pronounce biopic. The confusion arises in part because the -opic at the end looks like the ends of words like myopic and microscopic. It’s actually a shortening of the term biographical picture, so the accent goes on the first syllable. Biopic emerged from Hollywood jargon of the 1940s. This is part of a complete episode.
Humpty-Bump Pull Top, Diamond Loop, Reverse Shark’s Tooth, Hammerhead, and Goldfish from the Top are all names of aerobatic maneuvers recorded in the Aresti System, designed by Spanish aviator Jose Luis de Aresti Aguirre as a means of...
If you reeeeeeeeeally want to emphasize something in writing, you can engage in what linguists call expressive lengthening, or making a word longer by repeating letters. It’s an example of paralinguistic restitution — rendering in text...
I have always thought it was a shortening of biographical epic. Also, bio-pic just sounds weird.