1. A method of adaptive automatic discrete utterance recognition comprising: (a) providing the system with a single utterance set of prototype vocabulary keywords; (b) operating the system until a misrecognized utterance is detected; (c) prompting a prompted prototype vocabulary keyword candidate utterance; (d) calculating recognition distances for the unrecognized utterance, the prompted prototype vocabulary keyword candidate utterance, and the prototype vocabulary keyword; (e) comparing the calculated recognition distances; and (f) selectively accepting as prototype vocabulary keyword the prototype vocabulary keyword candidate utterance as a function of said step of comparing the calculated recognition distances.