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Jul 4, 2016

This week’s theme
Words with initial silent letters

This week’s words
knavery
wroth
knar
wrick
gnomic

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Fortunately, we have the answer to at least one of them.

Over its long and checkered history spanning 600 years, the word scent has changed its appearance more readily than a chameleon getting ready for a party. It has appeared as “sent” and “cent”, among other forms. In Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare has a huntsman say that his hound “pick’d out the dullest sent.”

That still doesn’t tell us the answer. Well, etymology to the rescue. The word scent comes to us from Latin sentire (to feel) which became French sentir (to smell), before making its way to English.

So why this hotchpotch of spelling? To understand this we have to realize that language was spoken long before writing came on the scene.

Few people were literate. When it came to writing, any spelling (sent/cent/scent/etc.) was good as long as it sounded right. Shakespeare spelled his name every which way -- the plaque on his tomb spells it as “Shakspeare”.

Eventually spelling became standardized. Among many competing spellings, one took scepter as the official spelling of the word, not necessarily because it was more virtuous than the rest.

This week we’ll see a few more words with silent letters.

knavery

(NAY-vuh-ree, NAYV-ree)