Bush and Carter's Nuclear Pronunciation Might Be Right

Elites mocked former President Jimmy Carter—and George W. Bush long after him—when he drawled the word nuclear into a funny-sounding "nukular" and "nukeer." That he'd served on a nuclear sub in the Navy made no difference to his critics. And neither did the fact that two other prominent Americans, former President Dwight Eisenhower and Edward Teller, the father of the H-bomb, also said "nukular." Now comes a new book that defends them. In Physics for Future Presidents, Prof. Richard Muller of the University of California says the pronunciation "has been a tradition at some of our weapons labs since World War II." He says it derives from the "combination of 'nuke' with the ending '-ular' inspired by similar words such as spectacular, popular, and molecular." So there. 

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