Word for the Wise, March 5

[Uadzit]

Topic: Cat & kitten

Although we were caught napping by the question of why cat is spelled with a C while kitten begins with a K, we were relatively quick to find another example. The archaic plural of cow is kine.

Does this mean there is some rule that when the name of a single adult creature begins with the letter and the sound of the hard C, its offspring and related words should take a K instead? Not at all: consider the cobra, the cur, and the carp.

So let's begin at the beginning, with the Phoenecian alphabet. The Phoenecian kap is considered the ancestor of the Greek Kappa. The ancient Greeks had no letter C; Kappa sufficed for words with the hard C sound. The Romans, however, differed. In the Latin alphabet, words with a K sound tended to be spelled with a C or a Q (think carpe diem).

So does this explain the diverse spellings of cat and kitten? Not if you're guessing that cat crept in on little Latin feet, while kitten dates back to the Greeks. In fact, both cat and kitten trace back to the same Latin ancestor. By the 14th century, when kitten was born into English, k had developed an interesting (and still current) variation: when a word beginning with a C developed a related form whose second letter was E or I (think kitten), the first letter of the related word would shift to the letter K.

Questions or comments? Write us at wftw@aol.com Production and research support for Word for the Wise comes from Merriam-Webster, publisher of language reference books and Web sites including Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition.  

[Eggy-Egg]

Uadzit

By the 14th century, when kitten was born into English, k had developed an interesting (and still current) variation: when a word beginning with a C developed a related form whose second letter was E or I (think kitten), the first letter of the related word would shift to the letter K.

@______________________@ What a headache-maker.

Are there any other examples of that? The big C-word with a relative that starts has a second letter of E or I...?