If you forget your mike is on and say something inappropriate do you have a “ blistering mike ” job or a “ live mic ” trouble ? Do you go to “ spread out mike night ” or “ heart-to-heart mic night ” ? When you ’ve delivered a devastating return do you drop “ the microphone ” or “ the mic ” ?
The early abbreviation formicrophone , see back to 1927 , wasmike , but over the retiring 25 or so yearsmichas been steadily pushingmikeout of the microphone scene . And this makes some people very unhappy .
Musician Samuel Bayer has maintained a 12 - year , self - described “ broadside ” about the utilisation ofmicto spell the abbreviation ofmicrophone . He is a firmmikeproponent , but he has track both side of the argumentation with fairish - disposed rigorousness .
The trouble withmicis that it does n’t surveil our common habit of matching abbreviation spellings to our orthoepy . Mic , like standardised wordstic , hic , sic , and the abbreviationpic , looks like it should be say “ Mickey . ” If we want to pronounce it like " mike , " we should accommodate the spelling , as we normally do . We haveCoke , not COC(a - cola),nuke , not NUC(lear),fave , not FAV(orite),fridge , not ( re)FRIG(erator ) , and for shortenings that would terminate in ‘ Intelligence Community ’ we havebike , not BIC(ycle ) , anddelish , not ( DELICious ) .
There ’s an additional job when it ’s used as a verb . When someone is attaching your microphone are theymicingyou ? Are you thenmiced ? No one wants to be covered in mouse . Not even the staunchestmicproponents go that far , usingmikingandmikedin those cases , ormic’ingandmic’d . Again , this does not follow our usual habits of abbreviation .
But in 2010 the AP style guidebook shift over to just this split situation , endorsingmicfor the noun while keepingmikedfor the verb . Ben Zimmer’sNew York Timescolumnabout the electric switch explains that despite the adoption ofmikeby writers in the early days of recording , mic , start out as a printed label on sound equipment , was embrace by sound engine driver in the 60s and then rappers , until it became the novel norm .
lexicon still givemicandmikeas acceptable alternatives , but at the instant Google return 18 times as many hits for “ candid mic ” as for “ open mike . ” In 2003 it was only 3 time as many . The writing is on the wall . And it take care like the composition on the mixture board .
