My mother had her skin debrided

Which means they removed the dead skin.

Now, the first time I heard the word, the person said debrade. And they didn't define the term, leaving me to guess. Which - I have a broad vocabulary. If I don't know the word, then they need to define it for me, because that's not all that common. But I know it can be hard to remember which words other people know and which words they probably don't, so I don't hold it against the nurse.

The second time, a different doctor corrected my pronunciation - it's debride, rhymes with "here comes de bride".

Not twenty minutes later, I heard a third pronunciation - debreed!

So I had it written down and looked it up. It's spelled "debride", a backformation of "debridement", and it's said with the same vowel as in see.

Glad I got that cleared up! Now every time I pumice my feet, I'll think to myself "here comes de breed".

The plot thickens.

siderea said she was only familiar with the "bride" pronunciation, so I went back to google.

Now, most pages turned up were just dictionary pages and Wikipedia and the like, but I found a few language threads - all of which were discussing the fact that both the "breed" and "bride" pronunciations are apparently quite widespread, and wondering which is more correct!

It appears that the original pronunciation in English hewed closely to the French, with the stress on the final syllable and all. However, it rapidly changed to be "mostly English, vowel as in see". The vowel as in sigh is the newest pronunciation, but it appears to be quite widespread already, although nonstandard. However! Since this word is so uncommon, it is doubtful that anybody knows if you're using a standard pronunciation or not, so I wouldn't worry about it in the slightest. Not sure where the "brayed" pronunciation slipped in, but maybe I misheard. (Also, the etymology is literally "unbridle" in French, so if anybody questions you, you can just say you've decided to work from there.)

Sources disagree wildly over whether the "bride" pronunciation is more widespread in England or in America, which suggests both pronunciations are prominent in both countries.