We bet you thought this word was an unlikely candidate to turn up on this list. Surely everyone knows how to say it correctly - it feels like it's used on the news ten million times every time there's an election going on? We don't know exactly where things went wrong with this word, but we're here to clear things up.
Sometimes, when we're very familiar with a word, we get lazy with the way we say it. Then other people hear us say that word and think that's the way it's supposed to be said, and so the lazy pronunciation spreads. "Candidate" is one of those words. It's not pronounced "can-uh-date". Look at the word, how could it be? That 'd' in the middle isn't going anywhere, it's got to be spoken out loud. "Can-da-date" is the word you're looking for.