THE Sunday Star received many enquiries on the pronunciation of “gerrymander” after the publication of our infographic Beyond the Polls on June 2, 2013.
As printed, the word comes from the name of a Massachusetts governor called Elbridge Gerry (whose name was pronounced with a “hard g” as in “Gary”) after he redrew the borders of his constituency to look like a salamander or a small, lizardlike amphibian. The mashing of the two words “Gerry” + “mander” produced the term “gerrymander”.
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