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How do *you* pronounce sudo?

Ben Halpern on August 27, 2019

Not necessarily how it's "supposed" to be pronounced, what do you say? (in your head or aloud) How do you pronounce sudo? ...
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avalander profile image
Avalander

Neither, I've aliased sudo to please.

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mattmoranjava profile image
Matt Moran

I aliased it to fucking.

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arximughal profile image
Muhammad Arslan Aslam

In case you use zsh...

github.com/nvbn/thefuck

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rihan profile image
Rihan

please remove recursively and force it irreversibly

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brightone profile image
Oleksii Filonenko

Okay, we need a shell framework for rhyming command aliases.

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Adam Crockett 🌀

That's now on my to-do list 🥰

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nadeeminamdar profile image
nadeeminamdar

You mean "too-doo" or "too-dough", :-) ?

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

I love this!

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Fulton Browne

How did you do that?

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avalander profile image
Avalander

I added this to my .bashrc file:

alias please='sudo'
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fultonbrowne profile image
Fulton Browne

thx

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stephanie profile image
Stephanie Handsteiner • Edited

alias please="sudo " in your .bash_profile

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vintharas profile image
Jaime González García

sudo as in s-u-d-o (Spanish pronunciation). It means literally "I sweat".

sudo rm -rf

I sweat as I remove all files from my file system

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Nicolò Rebughini

Came here expecting this, I'm satisfied with the internet once again.

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Tiash

In italian too 😂

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Jason R Tibbetts

Latin, too.

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Alesis Manzano

idem

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absinthetized profile image
Matteo Nunziati

This

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Henry Williams

That's a good one 😂

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v6 profile image
🦄N B🛡

Necessito a usar eso con mi compañeros.

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Benny Powers 🇮🇱🇨🇦

obligatory xkcd

'make me a sandwich' 'no' 'sudo make me a sandwich' 'ok'

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Giuseppe Vetri • Edited

Sudo like sudowoodo

Sudowoodo

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Arden de Raaij

came here to post the same 💚

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Giuseppe Vetri

Sudowoodo is life 💚

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Andrew Reese

SUDOWOODO shake shake shake shake shake shake

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Alex Pedro

I was hoping to see this in the comments! :D

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Stephen Chiang

Man so did I! 😂

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Cécile Lebleu

ssu-ssu-ssudio

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flrichar profile image
Fred Richards

Phil Collins taught us long ago...

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Yechiel Kalmenson

I pronounce it as "please" 🤗

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

That’s good 🙂

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Sidhant Panda

I've added the following alias

alias please='sudo $(fc -ln -1)'
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So now,

~$ bash ./helloworld
bash: ./helloworld: permission denied
~$ please
Hello World!
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Source twitter.com/zzaaho/status/11608251...

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Martin Wallgren

The previous command can be found in !!

alias please='sudo !!'
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sgcdialler

If only there were a way to change 'permission denied' to 'ask nicely'!

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arximughal profile image
Muhammad Arslan Aslam

I can say that I've successfully wasted an hour looking to see if this was possible!

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Andrew Bone

Sue Doe sounds like a lovely lady.

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Dan Conn

Sister of Jon though.

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n_develop profile image
Lars Richter

You are right. Would like to meet her some day. Somehow I think, I would do everything she tells me to do.

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Chad Hudson

That Sue Doe

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Austin S. Hemmelgarn

Habitually like the US English pronunciation of 'pseudo'.

When actually explaining the command to people though, I pronounce it as three syllables, spelling out the first two letters and pronouncing the last two just like the English word 'do', because that's how it breaks down as an acronym (short for 'Switch User and DO', derived from su for 'Switch User').

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mARK bLOORE

linux and MacOSX man su say "substitute user" (though "switch" seems to make more sense). but i'm pretty sure that in the old days it was "superuser", which is the default user to switch to.

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Austin S. Hemmelgarn

It's ambiguous in the original manual (page 17 of bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/man13.pdf, which is a scanned version of the original Version 1 UNIX manual), which does mention becoming 'super-user', but only once and not as the command name. I'm a bit too lazy to figure out when it changed from switching to UID 0 to being able to switch to any user, as that's likely to be the first place it's mentioned as switch or substitute.

All I've ever heard people say when talking about it is 'switch' though, probably because that's the mental flow for most people.

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Anton T

I thought it was short for "Super User Do"? 🤔

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Austin S. Hemmelgarn

I've heard people say that, but it's pretty well established that sudo is derived from the old UNIX su command, which is definitely 'switch user'. It just happens that both have the root user as the default user to when a specific user isn't specified and that's the common case, but there's nothing that prevents you from using it to switch to any user (and by default, the root user can use sudo to do so without needing a password).

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Josef Strzibny

No, it's not. It's from su command "switch user". Also check the man page that says "sudo, sudoedit — execute a command as another user".

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avalander profile image
Avalander

Useful after a tough day

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Smit Patel

Is this reddit, yet?

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David Brewer

I've never aliased sudo but i always alias python to pythong because I can never type that right

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Kasey Speakman • Edited

Pseudo. I always took it as being a pseudo-superuser if your user account has sudo permission. Also, the two vowels used are different so it feels more natural (to me) to use different sounds between the syllables. I heard it pronounced "pseudo" for years before I heard some random video on the internet pronounce it as "doo". I just took it as that person not knowing any better and felt bad for them. But I guess it is possible that my pronunciation has been wrong or that popular opinion can change what is "right". (Look at gif, where most of the internet disagrees with the creator of the format on pronunciation.)

The "please" meme is kinda funny, but in my mind it builds the wrong mental model of what sudo is for. It is a protection from making mistakes, a design feature to isolate user-level from system-level changes. Not courtesy. Well anyway, I guess there's nothing wrong with having fun with it as long as you know it's actual purpose.

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Josef Strzibny

No, it's not superuser actually. It's from su command "switch user". Also check the man page that says "sudo, sudoedit — execute a command as another user". That means not necessary superuser.

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Kasey Speakman • Edited

You are right, the commands are named for "switch user" not "super user". However, I still think of it as pseudo superuser because that is the default user that you switch to with su or sudo and is the way I use it 99% of the time. And "psuedo" also resonates really well with sudo because you aren't fully switching to the other user to execute the command like you do with su. (Still shows up in original user's command history, etc.)

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Kyle Boe • Edited

I use soo-doo because it is the compilation of the phonetics from the command's unabbreviated form:

superuser do

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Jérôme Gamez • Edited

Non-native speaker here, asking just out of curiosity: if phonetic (assuming English) why isn’t that syou-doo ?🙈

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Kyle Boe

You're totally right. It should be:

superuser do

I just looked it up and "superuser" is one word. I'll correct my original post.

Also, as a native English speaker, I'm sorry the language is so weird.

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simbo1905 profile image
Simon Massey

Totally that is what we day ”syou-do” because it's superuser do.

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strzibny profile image
Josef Strzibny

No, it's not superuser do. It's from su command "switch user". Also check the man page that says "sudo, sudoedit — execute a command as another user".

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Jude Pineda

I very often slip and type (and pronounce) sudo as sagi.

It's because I aliased sudo apt-get install to sagi and it's my most used Linux command.

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Jhinel Arcaya

This is so cool!

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Ryan Palo

soo-DO IT MOTHER TRUCKER.

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Carlos Trapet • Edited

Depends on the context. I pronounce it su-dont if followed by rm -rf

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Buzz Zhang

sudo sounds like 速度(sudu) in China, which means speed, hurry up!

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Christian Haas

How about man pages are required to also include the intended pronunciation including IPA key? That would be fun :)

This would also settle stuff like "awk", "chroot", or "nginx"...

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Thomas H Jones II

Was this posted, previously, as a different type of post? Could swear I'd already commented on a similar post a week or so ago.

I wonder how many people intentionally butcher the pronunciation of something just to mess with people (or otherwise to see how many people they can convince, "no, this is the right way,").

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ardennl profile image
Arden de Raaij

Alt text of image
Like sudowoodo!

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Robin Kretzschmar

I normally pronounce it "sudoh".
But as I was reading this poll, somehow in my mind I pronounced it funny in a Japanese way like "suuuuzdooo" (imagine a Japanese anime voice) 🤣

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flrichar profile image
Fred Richards

Kids have Play-Doh.
Adults have Su-Doh.

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Matthew Francis

Like "judo"

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Todor Todorov

In our country everybody pronounces sudo like judo :)
It is funny for everybody else, but it is how it is here :)

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Amara Graham

I imagine I was taught by my first CS professor and she had a VERY strong accent. It took me far too long to realize "struct trees" were actually "structures". 😂

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mARK bLOORE

accents can be fun. i had a math prof who taught us about furrier serious.

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Dylan Davenport

I looked it up and Sudo is short for “Superuser do” which I didn’t know before. Never thought to look it up 😏 Which leads me to believe it SHOULD be pronounced “soo doo” which is a bummer because it sounds weird so I’ll keep pronouncing it “soo dough”.

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Massimo Artizzu

Neither.

soodoh

Phonetically it's [suˈdo]
Accidentally, "sudo" in Italian means "I sweat". Puns usually ensue.

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Jeremy Forsythe

Soo-dough because it rolls off the tongue better and because the *nix geeks my dad hung around with when I was a wee bitty kid in the 80-90s pronounced it that way.

Similarly to how we learned to pronounce gif (JIF) correctly before most of you were out of diapers 🤣

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Richard Lenkovits

In hungarian language "s" is pronounced as "sh" (and "sz" is "s"), so I say it like "shudo" :D

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nadeeminamdar

I always pronounced it as "soo-dough".. until I realized "soo-doo" is more appropriate as it conveys "do as a super user". I am surprised soo-dough scored so much higher!

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Damir Franusic

Maybe it's su--su

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Mike Lockhart

I've tried to "correct" myself and start saying "soo-doo", but I keep doing back to the dough. I think it's because of the Simpsons influence ("duh-oh! Soo dough bang bang'), or maybe because dough rhymes with go.

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Adam K Dean

soo-dough

Were you ever taught this by anyone?

Nope. I read it on the gentoo wiki when I was compiling Linux at the age of 12.

Have you thought about this much?

Not really, but I remember learning sometime in the last decade that it stood for super-user-do, which makes soo-doo make sense, but 20 years of soo-dough makes it unchangeable in my brain.

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Darryn Dumisani Ph☻enix-92

The same as pseudo
Dough drags it out too long. But it's that sound.

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Alan Solitar

It's dough that you sue :)

sue dough

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Pacharapol Withayasakpunt • Edited

Why not saa-daa, for Substitute User Does?

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🦄N B🛡 • Edited

I pronounce it, "Fran that # sign better not mean you're root just to run journalctl."

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Andrew Brooks 👨‍💻

Su-doo-doo 💩

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Roelof Jan Elsinga

Am I the only one that didn't know there was another way to pronounce this? I feel a bit silly 😅

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Victor Homem Heck

as I think that sudo is a abreviation from Super User Do I read as normal Do

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Meghan (she/her) • Edited

This is like 'gif' vs 'jif'. I know it stands for super-user-do but here, the "right" answer is wrong.

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Clint

do you mean pseudo code
google.com/search?q=sudo+code&rlz=...

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Andrew Brown 🇨🇦

SUH DO

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Garrett / G66

I know it's "soo-doo" but I still pronounce it "soo-dough" like the Pokemon Sudowoodo.

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Carlos Magno

Very well, that's a good question. I usually use the Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation, so I think it's more like "soo-dough"

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Nicola Erario

Su d’oh! (cit. Homer Simpson)

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Adam Crockett 🌀

Like the amaracan colour to color, in programming we all need to stick to conventions regardless of correctness. Besides soo-doo is almost a pokomon woo-doo

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Allen Francis

Jumped ships from soo-dough to soo-do after reading discussion

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Dan Conn

I said it like this since learning the command and haven't really thought about it. But I think most people that I work with say it soo-dough too, although there are a few that say soo-doo.

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leob

"Sooo-dough" ... never thought about it, it just seems the natural way to pronounce it if you see it as "just" a word without any connotation to "su" or "do".

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Andrew Gibson

In some of the first episodes of Breaking Bad, they were always saying "We need to get Pseudo", which was short for Pseudoephedrine, but I kept thinking it was "sudo" and it confused me.

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Alex Sharp 🛠sharesecret.co

embarassed to admit i call it "soo doo"

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Zahid

I pronounce it like almost the same pronunciation for pseudo.

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Taweechai Maklay

superuser-do

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Josef Strzibny

It's not superuser actually. It's from su command "switch user". Also check the man page that says "sudo, sudoedit — execute a command as another user". That means not necessary superuser. Root is just a default for the command.

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Maxime FERRIER

I'm french, so I pronounce it with the french accent : fromtexttospeech.com/output/090898...

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Antonio Radovcic

Sue doo

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Jasterix

sudo like judo like you know

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Jonathan Kuhl

Sew doh

Fight me.

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Daniel Waller (he/him)

Just follows naturally from my language's pronunciation of vowels

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Michel Renaud

Like sumo (well, with the d instead of the m, needless to say...)

My first language is French, which may impact how I pronounce "non words" like that one...

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strzibny profile image
Josef Strzibny

Haha, me too. I am Czech btw.

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Carson Sturtevant

I've always said soo-dough.

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Abraham Williams

I pronounce sudo the correct way.

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Adam Crockett 🌀 • Edited

"Sudo Alexa make me a sandwich"

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Amanda Iaria

ahhhh is ahhh ... soo-dough ... sue-dough cough

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mARK bLOORE

i was confused the first time someone said pseudo to me. that is, after all, a word with no obvious connection to command lines.

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Micah Lindley

Definitely soo-dough. I am thinking about aliasing sudo to please, however. Guess I’ll see how I like it and then decide whether it’s “soo-dough” or “plee-ze”.

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Zen

Sudo 😂

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hadderakk

soo-doh or as "judo" if j==s 😜

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Tom Connolly

I was told it was short for "super user do" and thus should be pronounced soo doo.
That said, it looks too much like su dough to me, and this is how I say it. Perverse, I know.

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nataliedeweerd profile image
𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐞 𝐝𝐞 𝐖𝐞𝐞𝐫𝐝

Sue-doh... Like Pseudo.

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Sujata Pradhan

Ess You Doo :D

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Citizen Coder

su --> Ess-you
sudo --> Ess-you-doo

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Tramel Jones

Like the pokemon Sudowoodo

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Max Modesto Wallin

In regional Swedish saudo. Something like that 🙂.

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Jake Varness

suh dood

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delta456 profile image
Swastik Baranwal

soo-doo

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Reuben deVries

I have always said su-do as in "Super User, Do x)

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Cecelia Martinez

I know it's supposed to be su-doo but it will always be psuedo in my head. 😅

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nadeeminamdar

su.. doh! (Homer Simpson)