What are some words that have unnecessary letters?
Asked by
Brian1946 (
32592)
February 16th, 2017
How would you spell them without the extraneous characters?
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26 Answers
Just off the top of my head.
1 (K)nife
2bom(b)
3 dum(b)
Any words with silent e’s.
There are 3 of those in your question.
We(d)n(e)sday
s(w)ord
(w)rist
o(d)d
(T)rump
i(s)land
cas(t)le
k(n)ickers
(w)rap
Using my question as an example:
Wot r sum words that hav unnecessary letters?
Trump, do away with the first letter & you describe the man himself…an arse.
Hillary, all unnecessary letters.
Or indeed unnecessary emails
Dou(b)t
Arkansa(s)
Lim(b)
Fr(i)end
thoro(ugh)
anything with q because it is always followed by a useless u.
anything with pairs of let(t)ers.
Hilary, al unnesesary leters.
And, @Brian1946 that would be: “Wat r sum werds that hav unnesesary leters.”
I don’t think there are any.
The name Vaughn. Why noy just Vawn or Von? Must be some english rules I don’t know about, just seems odd.
Coffee
Giraffe
Mississippi
Gnome
Diamond
Scissors
Worcester -> Wooster
Featherstonhaugh -> Fanshaw (I’ve only heard this one on the internet)
@rojo Anything with pairs of letters?! But…butt…but…why?
@dxs bekaws it is stupid to wast letrs wen u can mayk yorself understud without the xtra efort.
Aw, I’m with Jeruba! The spellings tell stories of etymology and word-relations and the history of the many influences and conventions that have swept through the English language… Stories I’m still figuring out, but the bits I’ve collected are fascinating…
Here’s a story about the etymology of English swear words if anyone’s interested. And it’s useful to know should you ever be talking with someone who tries to tell you that “fuck” is an acronym for “fornicate under consent of king,” because they you can use some cold hard Oxford-approved facts to punch the stupid alternative fact in its made-up face. … I had a bad experience with someone trying to tell me a bunch of etymology “factoids” because they heard that I like words… I don’t want to talk about it.
^^I thought it was “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge”.
@rojo hahaha and gahhhhh :P at least that one makes more sense, and I’m assuming it’s spare the absurd back story of olden-time kings signing official F.U.C.K. documents for every marriage.
Exactly, @Soubresaut. The word’s orthography (spelling) is like its face. Much as a person’s face suggests age, ethnicity, character, and other biographical information, it tells you a lot about the word. And if you can recognize its roots, its origins, its relatives, and so on, you can gain a much deeper understanding of it. Some letters might not be necessary to the pronunciation of a word (or they might be), but pronunciation is hardly the only thing we want to know when we read a word.
There is all the letters that Webster cut from American spelling:
mould, honour, colour, travelled (I think), haematology, anaesthetics, oedema etc
I thought “fuck” was a German word.
@Soubresaut Thanks a lot. Now I have this picture stuck in my head of the Sheriff of Nottingham (the one from Robin Hood) sitting at his desk with a stack of papers and as he stamps each one he intones “Fuck this. Fuck this. Fuck this…....”
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