Attribution: David Szakaly.
Recently it has become trendy to pronounce the CompuServe image file format GIF
as gift without the ‘t’.
The inventor of the file format, Steve Wilhite, pronounces it as Jiff, like the peanut butter.
“The creators of the format pronounced GIF as “jif” with a soft “G” /ˈdʒɪf/ as in “gin”. Steve Wilhite says that the intended pronunciation deliberately echoes the American peanut butter brand Jif, and CompuServe employees would often say “Choosy developers choose GIF”, spoofing this brand’s television commercials.”
I don’t know why some Gen Xers and Millennials insist everyone pronouncing it like the peanut butter is wrong, you know who you are Cris Hardwick @hardwick.