“fuchsia” is a word that feels like it is stuck very uncomfortably in the middle of a transition it can’t complete

• name of a color
• comes from the name of a plant which has flowers in that color
• like many plants, it is named after a person
• the person’s surname was Fuchs (a German name meaning “Fox”)
• (the closest most English speakers get to pronouncing that name is something like “fooks” but in German the ch is pronounced in the back of the throat like a cat hiss)
• a reasonable anglicized approximation of the name “fuchsia,” as close as most English speakers would bother to get, would be something like “fookseea”
• however, it has never gotten there. English speakers persistently pronounce it “fyoosha,” as if the ch and the s were in opposite places in the word, like fucking lexically-mandated dyslexia
• but the spelling of the word has not been adapted to reflect this pronunciation. if I type “fuschia” it still gets redlined by any spellchecker anywhere
• poor word is trapped in this horrible liminal limbo between languages
• pronunciation warped but the spelling still held back from adapting to fit it
• like a miserable kid still forced to wear clothes it grew out of years ago
• probably symbolic of a whole lot of things in America and the English language but I’m too tired to think about any of it now