The word &quot;uroboros,&quot; coming ultimately from Greek, has a couple of spellings and also pronunciations (see ). As explained by Nohat in the linked page, the  are the following:  /ɔːˈrɒbɔrəs/ /jʊərɵˈbɒrəs/   lists only /ˌjʊərə(ʊ)ˈbɒrəs/ for &quot;uroboros,&quot; and states that the word was first used in English around the 1940s. , for &quot;ouroboros,&quot; lists yet another set of pronunciations, oddly enough:  /ˌuːrəˈbɒrəs/ /uːˈrɒbəˌrɒs/  So in one sense, it almost seems a free-for-all. However, there's one pronunciation that seemed natural to me but that I never see listed: /jʊəˈrɒbɔrəs/, with antepenultimate stress. Here's why I'd expect this pronunciation. . The stress in Greek is on the penult, but there's a short /o/ in the penultimate syllable, so I'd expect a Latinized pronunciation of /uˈroboros/ according to the , and I'd also expect for the Latin stress position to carry over to the English word, especially when the initial vowel uses the value /jʊə/ associated with the . Compare to &quot;automaton,&quot; another example of a Greek word with a short vowel in the penult that is stressed on the antepenult in English. But, I've never seen this pronunciation listed. Dictionaries do list pronunciations with antepenult accent, and pronunciations with initial /j/, but none I can find list a pronunciation with both of these features combined. So, if I use it, am I just adding my own idiosyncratic pronunciation to the mix, no better and no worse than the other variants? Or is there some flaw in the analogy I made above that makes /jʊəˈrɒbɔrəs/ a solecism, but that justifies /jʊərɵˈbɒrəs/ (or /ɔːˈrɒbɔrəs/, etc.) ?  :  In words of three or more syllables, stress falls either on the penult or the antepenult (third from the end), according to these criteria:  If the penult contains a short vowel in an open syllable, the stress falls on the antepenult: e.g. stá.mi.na, hy.pó.the.sis. If the penult contains a long vowel; a diphthong; a closed syllable (with any length of vowel); or is followed by z, the stress falls on the penult.  [...] The fact that decorum is stressed on the penult, and exodus on the antepenult, is a fact about each of these words that must be memorized separately (unless one is already familiar with the Classical quantities, and in the former case, additionally with the fact that decus -ŏris n. with short -o- syllable became in late Latin decus/decor -ōris m. with long -o- syllable: 'Dómine, diléxi decórem domus tuæ').  Does anyone know if the pronunciation of &quot;uroboros&quot; might be explained in the same way as that of &quot;decorum,&quot; where the vowel length/stress shifted at some point in Latin? Was &quot;uroboros&quot; or &quot;ouroboros&quot; even used in Latin? I've already searched out attested English pronunciations, so I don't want an answer that just repeats these (although I would appreciate learning about any additional pronunciations listed by reputable dictionaries). What I'm concerned with now is the pattern behind them, possible etymological bases for the English pronunciation, and orthoëpic advice, in particular about the hypothetical pronunciation /jʊəˈrɒbɔrəs/.
I have been studying the pronunciation of Greek-derived words in English, and I've found an odd anomaly. There are (at least) two possible pronunciation patterns for plural word-forms that end in -&#8288;mata (which correspond to singular word-forms that end in -&#8288;ma).   Antepenult stress (expected)  It appears that it is always possible to place the stress on the antepenult (third-to-last) syllable, such as:    /ˈlɛmə/, /ˈlɛmətə/  /ˈskiːmə/, /ˈskiːmətə/  /ˌtɛrəˈtoʊmə/, /ˌtɛrəˈtoʊmətə/~/ˌtɛrəˈtɒmətə/  /ˈstɪɡmə/, /ˈstɪɡmətə/   This is what would be expected from  (I believe most or all of these words came through Latin before entering English), since the penultimate "a" in the original Greek words is short.  Maybe Latin vowel quality and stress rules are not very relevant; certainly, few English speakers know about them nowadays. And even with antepenult stress, some of these pronunciations do not seem to follow all of the traditional rules for pronouncing Latin-derived terms in English. I was reminded by some comments in this  that  in antepenult stressed syllables, we would expect tense ("long") vowels to be shortened due to  (TSL), yielding pronunciations like /ˌtɛrəˈtɒmətə/ (which I just noticed is in fact listed in the Oxford English dictionary) and ?/ˈskɛmətə/ (which is not). (Compare to genus~genera /dʒiːnəs/~/dʒɛnərə/, and perhaps opus~opera /oʊpəs/~/ɒpərə/). However, there are other Latinate plural forms that typically don't have trisyllabic laxing (matrices, also I think helices), or where both the lax- and tense-voweled pronunciations coexist (codices, apices), so I guess the apparent lack of it in schemata should not be surprising. (There are even some exceptions to TSL in singular nouns like obesity.)  Penult stress (unexpected)  The other pronunciation seems to exist only for a couple of words, in which the penultimate "a" is commonly stressed and broadened: stigma ~ stigmáta  (listed by both the Merriam-Webster dictionary and the ), and also sometimes schéma ~ schemáta /skiːˈmɑːtə/ (listed only by the ). (Neither the Merriam-Webster dictionary nor the Oxford Learner's Dictionaries list *"lemmáta").  I'm wondering why this pronunciation exists. It's an irregular plural either way, and putting the stress on the penultimate syllable creates a stress change between the singular and the plural forms.  (It's true that all of these words are rare, and some people might pronounce some of their plurals differently. The pronunciations I give here are simply the ones listed in dictionaries.)  The plural form "stigmata" is probably most common in religious or theological contexts (where it refers to the wounds of Christ), so at first I wondered if the penultimate stress was supposed to be closer to the original Greek pronunciation, but according to , the stress is on the antepenult in Greek as well.  So, what's up with this? Did the stress perhaps change in Latin over time, is this a tradition of Greek accentuation that I'm not familiar with, is this a simple matter of ignorance of the original position of the stress that has now become entrenched with time and usage, or is this somehow explainable by established English stress patterns? (For example, do English speakers have some natural preference for a penultimate stress on polysyllabic words?)  If nobody knows of a reason, I suppose I can just put it down to people encountering the word mainly in text, not knowing which syllable to stress, and choosing the penult because it sounds better to them.  (I asked this question a while back on , but nobody knew of any reason.)
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