When Susie Dent, Countdown’s etymology guru, declared on Wednesday that the common mispronunciation of “mischievous” as “mischiev-i-ous” should now be considered acceptable, she caused a stir not just at the Hay Festival but among traditionalists across the country.

The reaction to her intervention highlights the extraordinary capacity of mispronounced words to irritate the listener – and how everyone has their own particular bugbears.

Here, Telegraph writers and editors identify the pronunciations that grate the most – and confess to some of their own errors.

‘Haitch’

– Christopher Howse, assistant editor

In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the heroine is obliged by American Puritans to wear a big red A to show she has been caught in adultery. I’d like to see a capital H worn by anyone caught pronouncing it “haitch”.

Admittedly “aitch” is a funny name for a letter. Q and R are funny too, but you don’t hear people saying “rar” instead of “ar”. “Haitch”, though, is a case of hypercorrection and genteelism. It’s like saying “to my wife and I” because it sounds more polite than “to my wife and me”.

Children used to be told not to drop their aitches. The mistake is to think an aitch belongs at the beginning of “aitch”. Last year I was impressed by the bravery of Amol Rajan, the Today presenter, who, after 40 years alive and a Cambridge degree in English, announced he was now going to start pronouncing “aitch” correctly. Bravo.

In 1862, Punch, in its class-conscious way, mocked the aspiration of “aitch”: “She could not bear hoysters until there was a haitch in the month.” But I’m afraid it’s a class-marker still, and we condemn our children to a life of social degradation if we let them say “haitch”.

Jeremy Butterfield, the editor of Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage, thinks “haitch” will prevail, “unspeakably uncouth though it may appear”. Against this final assault by Chaos and Old Night, Amol and I will die in the last ditch, in which we may find room for you too.