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How to pronounce CLI

acronym community-consensus

C L I /ˌsiː ɛl ˈaɪ/ mp3

CLI is most commonly pronounced "C L I" (/ˌsiː ɛl ˈaɪ/). This is the widely-used reading among engineers, though edge cases exist.

Letters "C-L-I". Command Line Interface.

Pronouncing project and product names correctly avoids the small but persistent friction of being gently corrected during standups, conference Q&As, and team calls. Hearing the word a few times locks in the right reading better than reading IPA ever will. Pronounce is a community-maintained dictionary — every entry tagged with a confidence level and (where possible) a citable source.

Hear it from the command line

$ say-it CLI # primary × 3 + audible "or: …" for each alternate
$ say-it --why CLI # print the dict entry with source URL

Install the CLI: git clone https://github.com/anzy-renlab-ai/pronounce.git && cd pronounce && ./install.sh

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