fun fact: the S in island is completely fucking made up, the original spelling was “iland” with “i” being cognate with “ö” in swedish. It basically means island land and the only reason why there’s an S in there is because some shithead thought it was related to the french word “isle” and felt that INCORRECT idea warranted changing the spelling.
I think what you said is slightly wrong. Island and isle are both English words that seem to have no ethymological connection. However close semantic relation of “isle” might have cause the introduction of the “s” at some point. Isle itself probably comes from latin “insula”. The French still have only one word “Île”. Germans have “Eiland” and “Insel”.
island [OE] Despite their similarity, island has no etymological connection with isle (their resemblance is due to a 16th-century change in the spelling of island under the influence of its semantic neighbour isle). Island comes ultimately from a prehistoric Germanic *aujō, which denoted ‘land associated with water,’ and was distantly related to Latin aqua ‘water’. This passed into Old English as īeg ‘island,’ which was subsequently compounded with land to form īegland ‘island’. By the late Middle English period this had developed to iland, the form which was turned into island. (A diminutive form of Old English īeg, incidentally, has given us eyot ‘small island in a river’ [OE].)
Isle [13] itself comes via Old French ile from Latin insula (the s is a 15th-century reintroduction from Latin). Other contributions made by insula to English include insular [17], insulate [16], insulin, isolate [via Italian) [18], and peninsula [16].
fun fact: the S in island is completely fucking made up, the original spelling was “iland” with “i” being cognate with “ö” in swedish. It basically means island land and the only reason why there’s an S in there is because some shithead thought it was related to the french word “isle” and felt that INCORRECT idea warranted changing the spelling.
Yep. It is indeed.
Same with the K in knight, which was added for no fucking reason.Sweden also has an island called Öland which means island land.“Knight” used to be pronounced with the “K.” It was always there, it’s not pronouncing it that’s new.
Oh yeah I confused it with some other word.
“Receipt” is a good example. A silent “P” was shoved in there to make it seem more fancy.
That’s a better one!
Probably “night,” which is also properly pronounced with the leading K sound.
I think what you said is slightly wrong. Island and isle are both English words that seem to have no ethymological connection. However close semantic relation of “isle” might have cause the introduction of the “s” at some point. Isle itself probably comes from latin “insula”. The French still have only one word “Île”. Germans have “Eiland” and “Insel”.
island [OE] Despite their similarity, island has no etymological connection with isle (their resemblance is due to a 16th-century change in the spelling of island under the influence of its semantic neighbour isle). Island comes ultimately from a prehistoric Germanic *aujō, which denoted ‘land associated with water,’ and was distantly related to Latin aqua ‘water’. This passed into Old English as īeg ‘island,’ which was subsequently compounded with land to form īegland ‘island’. By the late Middle English period this had developed to iland, the form which was turned into island. (A diminutive form of Old English īeg, incidentally, has given us eyot ‘small island in a river’ [OE].)
Isle [13] itself comes via Old French ile from Latin insula (the s is a 15th-century reintroduction from Latin). Other contributions made by insula to English include insular [17], insulate [16], insulin, isolate [via Italian) [18], and peninsula [16].