Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
id511664589
We pronounce it indict because its original spelling in English was E-N-D-I-T-E, a spelling that was used for 300 years before scholars decided to make it look more like its Latin root word, indictare. Our pronunciation, however, still reflects the original English spelling. This after-the-fact correction of spellings, based on Latin, is also why there’s a B in the words debt, doubt, plumber, and subtle, and a silent S in island
id511665075
Why did it used to be spelled endite? Because that’s how it was spelled in French, and post–Norman Invasion English borrowed many legal terms from the new overlords
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Many words that came from Latin — or that they thought had come from Latin — got extra silent letters just to show their glorious classical origins. So det, which could be traced back to debitum, got the b stuffed in just as a schoolmasterish rap on the knuckles. Iland, which actually came from an Old English word, was mistakenly thought to come from Latin insula and so an s was erroneously stuffed in. Words such as receipt, indict, and victual (“vittle”) also got their forms from the same “reform.”