Woman gives birth to...

In message , Ten Pin Bowling writes

Well, that is 'sort of' the way the lady news reader pronounced it (several times) on this evening's BBC Radio 4 news, at 6pm.

Instead of the stress being put on the 'tup' of 'octuplets' (which is where the common pronunciation normally puts it), she repeatedly stressed the 'oct'. The first time she said it, I really did think that it was 'octopus'. Is she right, or is it just another example of BBC newspeak?

It's not how it was pronounced on BBC TV News at Ten. Maybe your radio lady was trying to emphasise the "oct" to distinguish it from, say, "sept", so it would have been a non-standard pronunciation.

Talking of which, they showed a clip of an American newsreader saying it, which sounded even weirder than 'octopus', because she pronounced 'tup' like 'tupp' as in 'tupperware', not like 'toop'.