The it bird this week in Brooklyn has been a least bittern, hiding out in some phragmites along the shore of Prospect Park’s lake, just across the street from the Well House. I finally saw it on my fifth attempt, but this is as much of it as I saw.
I’ve always pronounced “phragmites” (which means “reeds”) with three syllables, because it looked Greek to me, but everyone around me at the lake this week was rhyming it with “termites,” so I just looked it up. It turns out it is Greek, per the OED, from φραγμίτησ (phragmites), meaning “growing in hedges.” So it rhymes, or once upon a time used to rhyme, with “sorites” and “fomites.” Of course these things change; Wikipedia says there’s now a singular form “fomite,” back-derived from “fomites,” that rhymes with “Joe might.”