its tallow..." eewwwww) Unless you're a cow contemplating a huge kettle at the end of a funny-smelling hall... Doug on February 1, 2011 8:49 am About two months ago, in local TV news coverage of Christmas preparations by various and sundry, a particular anchorman pronounced "poinsettia" as "poinsetta" (with no 2nd i at the end). In my capacity as resident Grammar Nazi, I fired off an email to him, gently suggesting that "poinsettia" ends the same way as genitalia, memorabilia, Pennsylvania, pyromania, etc.- in an "ee-yah" sound, not just an "ah" sound. The next evening, he mentioned that many viewers had taken him to task over this controversial issue (ROFL), so he played a clip of a stringer interviewing the manager of the Nursery where they had bought their poinsettias. Based on his speech, this man never met a 4th grade teacher. Even bearing in mind that I live in a semi-rural Southern U.S. area, this individual was exceptionally limited (and most illiterate-sounding) in his speech. However, he assured the news folks that the correct pronunciation was "Poinsetta" and even obtained on-camera corroboration from (wait for it) the fork-lift driver as he plunked a pallet of Poinsettias into a pick-em-up truck: "Yup, them there's Poinsettas, all right. Been that way since before Mama's time." So back to the news anchor, who smugly announced that he was glad *that* was settled and "irregardless" of how everyone chose to pronounce it personally, the *correct* pronunciation had at long last been established by