The big book of beastly mispronunciations, byCharles Harrington Elster, says:
cache KASH (like cash).
cachet ka-SHAY (like cash hay said quickly)
route ROOT or ROWT
ROOT has been preferred or listed first in dictionaries since the mid-195h century. ROT, however, has as long ahistory as ROOT, and was preferred by many of the earliest authorities. In the first half of the 20th century ROWT was often labeled colloquial, provincial, or military; it is now well established in various engineering, transportation, delivery, and sales contexts.
I prefer ROOT for all senses of the word route, but it is difficult to fashion an argument for it that goes further than saying that is how I was taught to pronounce it, that is how most educated speakers around me said it, and that is the pronounciation that feels right and cultivated to me. In my vocabulary, route will always be ROOT and rout ROWT, but many speakers nowadays prefer to pronounce both words ROWT. Since it cannot be stated unequivocally that one pronunciation fo route is right and the other wrong, I present the following historical evidence, which you can use to make up your mind, bolster your case, or live and let live, as you prefer.
In his Critical Pronouncing Dictionary of 1971, the Gnlish elocutionist John Walker prefers ROOT but notes that the word "is often pronounced so as to rhyme with doubt by respectable speakers. In a later edition, Walker changed his course. "Upon a more accurate observation of the best usage," he wrote, "I must give the preference to ROWT… nowithstanding its coincidence in sound with another word of a different meaning; the fewr French sounds of this diphthong we have in our language the better."
Worcester (1860, who prefers ROOT, says, "Most of the orthoepists more recent than Walker give the preference to the pronunciation ROOT." Ayres (1894) says that "there is abundant authority for pronouncing this word rowt; but this pronunciation is now very generally considered inelegant." Vizetelly (1929) says the "best modern usage pronounces the word as if written root, " and Opdycke (1939) assigns ROWT to "colloquial and provincial usage."
funk & Wagnalls Standard (1897) countenancwes only ROOT, but the Century (1880-1914) sanctions ROWT as as alternative. Webster 2 (1934) says that ROOT "is now the generally accepted pronounciation, but in certain special cases rout (ou in out) prevails, as in military use, among railroad men, and colloquially, of a delivery route."
Since then ROWT has gained a good deal of ground, but ROOT still appears to hold the lead among educated speakers, and all four major current American dictionaries list it first.
Morris & Morris (1985) observe that "people like Army engineers, bus and plane dispatchers, and others professionally engaged in planning routes tend to pronounce route so it rhymes with ‘out." Pronouncing it as if it were ‘root’, is owever, equally acceptable."
In Watching My Language (1997), William Safire writes, "President George Bush frowned on ‘the tax-and spend route, which he pronounced ROWT.’ that is not incorrect… Most of us, however, have come to use’root’ to mean ‘way, itinerary, journey, map,’ spelled route, and pronounced the same as the root of a plant. We use ‘ROWT’ to pronouce the word spelled rout, meaning ‘resounding defeat; disroderly flight from battle; electroal debacle’ ". It is perfaps worth noting that if Safire received any letters objecting to this assessment when it first appeared in his column in The BNew York Times Magazine, he does not reprint them in his book.
Brazilian dude
