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smcl

Are you:

- weary of these getting downplayed (pron. wee-ree = you are tired of it)

- wary of these getting downplayed (pron. way-ray = you are suspicious of it)

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I think people combine leery and wary in their mind and end up with weary, which they don't intend. I see it a lot.

In the case of the parent comment however, weary does work.

The rare occasion that it does work both ways

And/or they've seen the word "weary" and assume it's pronounced like "wary", so they spell the word "wary" as "weary".

This is it - if you hear the word "wary" and know the verb "to wear" before encountering the written word "weary" it's totally understandable to assume that is how "wary" is written and to mix them up.

What I wanted to do with my comment is show this without coming across as a mean or pedantic - especially since in the context both work ok. I've no idea if I accomplished that, I probably come across as a dick but I hope I don't.

Isn’t “grow weary” a common phrase, though?

so is "grow wary", which is the potential problem.

"Grow wary" isn't a thing.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=grow+weary%2Cg...

Always remember to mind the y-axis and scale when looking at and thinking about graphs. They can be deceptive even without meaning to.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=grow+wary&year...

I'm not sure what your point is, since you looked at the vanishingly uncommon phrase alone, giving the false impression of popularity.

You said it's not a thing. It is, in fact, a thing. I've heard it and said it often enough to be sure it's not so uncommon that it's reasonable to say it's not a thing.

You also need to keep in mind what Google Ngram is.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/info

>> "When you enter phrases into the Google Books Ngram Viewer, it displays a graph showing how those phrases have occurred in a corpus of books (e.g., "British English", "English Fiction", "French") over the selected years."

It's a collection of books. Books remain relevant, but it tells you nothing of usage outside that. You only have to run a search on Google to see that it's used in a wide range of unrelated contexts. It's not some obscure anachronism or regionalism.

Much like how irregardless is now considered a thing. One of these days "mute point" will be a thing too :). I better not look that up, maybe it already is. I often wonder what people think they're saying when they misuse phrases like that.

Grow weary (tired of) and grow wary (suspicious of/concerned about) are different things though. Irregardless is a modification of the already useful regardless. I'm not sure how they're comparable.

It is, in fact, a thing

It isn't. "Grow weary of" is a common phrase. "Grow wary of" are words you can put together, but it's not a common phrase.

I've already posted all the evidence needed, and I grow weary of this misguided argument.

Your lack of familiarity with the phrase and misunderstanding your own source does not actually prove anything.

Here, I'll give you a head start on doing what I suggested.

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22grow+wary%22

That sure looks like a phrase used across a wide range of contexts and unconnected fields, too wide to support any notion that it's obscure. There's even a non-English news outlet using it in its English coverage.

Even if that's the case, it's very easy to hear "grow weary" and conflate it with the similar word "wary", coming up with "grow wary" as a malapropism.

Those pronunciation guides confused me a lot before I scanned back, and read the words themselves (trying to ignore the pronunciations I'd already seen!) - so let me proffer:

- weary 'weir[in a river]-(r)ee'

- wary 'wear[clothes]-(r)ee'

Which just goes to demonstrate how weird and multi-sourced English is, doesn't it. And also maybe we just pronounce these very differently (I'm British) - 'way-ray' is way off to me.

I add the '(r)' because being British (and I believe some of the US) an 'r' following a vowel is under-pronounced (in the opinion of some other accent holders), as in 'wear', but not when followed by another (pseudo)vowel, in 'weary' - but that may not be the case for you.

Where do they pronounce wary way-ray? I’ve always said it “where-y”.

Scotland - and the emphasis is on the first syllable ("wea-" is about 1.5-2x longer than "ry", with the "r" short and rolled). But remember mapping pronunciation of spoken-English to Latin characters is a little bit ambiguous due to accents. For example you use the word "where" to help describe how you pronounce "wary", but for me that "wh" in "where" is slightly aspirated.

Both are valid phrases, and both can be true, even at the same time.

They are! That's why I asked which it was.

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