27 states say the three-syllable mischievous and 24 the four-syllable mischievious. The second is widely called an error and is in fact a stable regional pronunciation with four centuries behind it.
mischievous (3 syllables) leads 27 states
mischievious (4 syllables) leads 24 states
Each square is one state, placed roughly where it sits on the map and coloured by the answer that leads there. Survey question: “mischievous vs. mischievious”
Share of respondents in each state giving each answer. Percentages do not sum to 100: the survey offered answers this map does not name, and they are left out rather than folded into one of the three.
Mischievous or Mischievious? — Harvard Dialect Survey.
State
mischievous (3 syllables)
mischievious (4 syllables)
Alabama
34.6%
38.4% ◀
Alaska
23.4%
36.2% ◀
Arizona
33.3%
36.5% ◀
Arkansas
39.3% ◀
37.1%
California
39.1% ◀
32.7%
Colorado
30.5%
36.5% ◀
Connecticut
66.8% ◀
13.4%
Delaware
64.6% ◀
18.8%
Florida
39.7% ◀
31.5%
Georgia
43.5% ◀
30.5%
Hawaii
51.8% ◀
32.1%
Idaho
24.4%
42.2% ◀
Illinois
42.8% ◀
31.8%
Indiana
36.4% ◀
35.2%
Iowa
31.5%
43.9% ◀
Kansas
32.1%
40.4% ◀
Kentucky
29.8%
40.5% ◀
Louisiana
35.4%
39.1% ◀
Maine
69.4% ◀
11.1%
Maryland
47.4% ◀
26.6%
Massachusetts
71.7% ◀
10.4%
Michigan
40.2% ◀
33.7%
Minnesota
39.2% ◀
31.4%
Mississippi
31.1%
31.9% ◀
Missouri
35.5%
37.7% ◀
Montana
31.6%
43.9% ◀
Nebraska
29.4%
41.1% ◀
Nevada
33.3%
40.9% ◀
New Hampshire
67.2% ◀
10.9%
New Jersey
52.4% ◀
23.1%
New Mexico
34.8%
35.7% ◀
New York
63.2% ◀
16.2%
North Carolina
44.5% ◀
29%
North Dakota
36.8% ◀
31.6%
Ohio
41.1% ◀
32%
Oklahoma
31.8%
40.7% ◀
Oregon
31.9%
34.5% ◀
Pennsylvania
42.8% ◀
30.8%
Rhode Island
69% ◀
14%
South Carolina
50% ◀
27.4%
South Dakota
28.7%
41.6% ◀
Tennessee
35.2%
37.2% ◀
Texas
32.4%
38.7% ◀
Utah
25.2%
42.7% ◀
Vermont
64.9% ◀
14.3%
Virginia
48.7% ◀
24.5%
Washington
34.4%
36.2% ◀
Washington, D.C.
69.8% ◀
16.3%
West Virginia
33.3%
38.9% ◀
Wisconsin
37.1% ◀
35.9%
Wyoming
29.6%
38% ◀
Where this data comes from
The map above is drawn from the Harvard Dialect Survey, collected by Bert Vaux and Scott Golder in 2002–2003. It asked 122 questions and recorded, for each one, the share of respondents in every US state who gave each answer. It is a large self-selected sample rather than a census, and it is now two decades old — treat it as a well-supported picture of how people spoke then, not a measurement of today.
Data used under the CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 licence: attribution and share-alike, non-commercial. DialectGuessr’s own survey data is separate and is described on the about page.
