Silent Letters That Used To Be Pronounced

Modern English is rife with words that contain silent letters. In many cases those letters were never pronounced, such as the “h” in “hour” or “s” in “aisle.” But other letters that are now silent were once articulated long ago. Old English speakers, for example, would pronounce the “k” in “knife” and “b” in “lamb.” It was only as the language evolved into Middle and later Modern English that the letters eventually became silent. Here’s a look at how this evolution occurred and why certain letters lost their vocal prominence.

The word “knife” comes from the Old Norse knifr, pronounced as “kuh-nee-vur.” This became cnif (“kuh-neef”) in Old English, which ultimately regained the “k” and became “knife.” Sometime around the 15th or 16th century — a period when Middle English gave way to Modern English — speakers dropped the hard “k” sound in favor of a more fluid and softer “n” sound. This process —  omitting difficult sounds in order to achieve a smoother speech flow — is called elision.

“Sword” comes from the Old English sweord, in which the “w” was audibly pronounced. This carried over to when Middle English speakers started saying “sword,” resulting in a word that sounded like “swore” but with a “d” sound at the end. This vocalization remained the standard until about the 17th century, when the “w” sound faded from use. Yet the letter “w” remains a fossilized part of the word today.

The etymological origins of the word “lamb” can be traced back to the Proto-Germanic lambaz, which contains a hard “b” sound. This evolved into the Old English lombor and the plural lambru, both of which maintained that hard “b.” But by the 13th century, the “b” was dropped and became silent, and the pronunciation has remained that way since.

The “w” in “wrap” was pronounced by Middle English speakers, though it eventually faded, in part because of anatomical reasons. Merriam-Webster notes that our lips protrude in a similar manner whether we’re making an “r” sound such as “ruh” or a “w” like “wuh.” Given those similar lip positions, it was difficult for English speakers to form distinctive sounds when pronouncing the letters “w” and “r” back to back. To make speech easier, the sounds ultimately merged, resulting in a silent “w” at the start of “wr” words, including “wrap” and “write.”

The word “Wednesday” appears like it should be three syllables long, as in “Wed-nes-day.” But almost every English speaker pronounces it as just “Wens-day,” and it has to do with phonetic ease. The word was derived from the Old English wodnesdæg, or “Woden’s day,” which itself comes from the Old Norse Oðinsdagr (named for the god Odin). By the 15th century, English speakers dropped the hard “d” sound since it was an annoyance to pronounce, resulting in the smoother flow we know today.

“Mnemonic” — meaning “of or relating to memory” — is one of the few English words that begins with an “mn” consonant pairing. The “m” is silent, but that wasn’t always the case. The word came to English from Greek in the 1600s, and the starting “m” was actually pronounced as recently as the late 1800s. But the double consonant pronunciation proved challenging, and the “m” sound was dropped before the 20th century.

The “l” was once pronounced in “should” — as well as in similar words such as “could” and “would.” In the case of “should,” the pronunciation can be traced back to its Old English roots. “Should” is derived from sceolde, which is the past tense of sceal (the predecessor of the word “shall”). These Old English terms all had prominent “l” sounds, and those sounds stuck around when “should” became a word around 1200. Folks continued to pronounce the “l” through the 1500s (similar to the “should” in “shoulder), but the sound was dropped by the 1600s, in part to achieve a more fluid word flow.