Resound does not sound like it looks like.
Last night I heard a sports announcer say something that sounded a bit strange. And then sounded a bit strange again—in essence, it re-sounded. “The ninth-inning comeback against the Cincinnati Reds made a re-sounding statement!” Yes, re-sound, with a pronounced S instead of a pronounced Z in the middle.
A statement that (zounds!) resounds does indeed re-sound—it echoes. The sound in resound is the sound that you would expect. So where does the reezound pronunciation come in? Ultimately, the word comes from Old French and retains its imported pronunciation. Interestingly, when the word was brought into English around the late 1300s, it was spelled resoun, but the spelling eventually changed in analogy of the word sound. So we changed the spelling to conform to the word sound, but we didn’t change the pronunciation to conform to the word sound. Therefore, to properly pronounce resound, think of the pronunciation of its close relative, resonate.
Ah, resonate. Let’s see if our friend the sports announcer can re-sound that one. Perhaps to rhyme with Cincinnati?