structural:reformatting
Etymology and pronunciation

Regarding the specific name, / d ɪ ˈ f ɪ s ɪ l i / is the traditional norm, reflecting how medical English usually pronounces naturalized New Latin words (which in turn largely reflects traditional English pronunciation of Latin), although a restored pronunciation of / d ɪ ˈ f ɪ k ɪ l eɪ / is also sometimes used (the classical Latin pronunciation is reconstructed as). The specific name is also commonly pronounced / ˌ d iː f i ˈ s iː l /, as though it were French, which from a prescriptive viewpoint is a "mispronunciation" but from a linguistically descriptive viewpoint cannot be described as erroneous because it is so widely used among health care professionals; it can be described as "the non-preferred variant" from the viewpoint of sticking most regularly to New Latin in binomial nomenclature, which is also a valid viewpoint, although New Latin specific names contain such a wide array of extra-Latin roots (including surnames and jocular references) that extra-Latin pronunciation is involved anyway (as seen, for example, with Ba humbugi, Spongiforma squarepantsii, and hundreds of others).