15 Common But Wrongly Spelled Words According To History

Game of Thrones fans are familiar with the character Hodor, who came to be known as such because that is the only word he says in the TV series. We later find out that he used to speak but had a traumatic experience while repeating the phrase “Hold the door.” He would later transform that phrase into “Hodor,” but this is not mere entertainment.

Speech and languages constantly change as people seek easy and more efficient forms of expression and communication. For instance, many common words we use today were neither pronounced nor spelt the way we do. These words have gone through a spelling and pronunciation evolution, making them easier for us to use.

In this list, we will explore 15 such words while providing a detailed account of what necessitated their evolution.

Smart

In both old and middle English, the word “smart” had different spellings based on whether it was a noun, verb, or adjective. As a noun in Middle English, its spelling was “smerte.” As an adjective in late old English, it was “smeart,” then as an adjective in Middle English speech, it was “smert.” As a verb, in old English, it was “smeortan,” and in Middle English, it was “smerten.”

Not only did these words have different spellings, but they also had different meanings to the current interpretation of “smart.” Back then, they referred to pain, sharpness, or causing pain. It would later refer to people who metaphorically “cut” words as this was considered intelligent.

Work

In old English, “work” was spelt as “weorc.” Furthermore, old English had different words for both the noun and verb of this word. The noun was written as “weorc,” while the verb was “wyrcan.”

The German language greatly influenced the way we write it today. In German at that time, this word was spelt as “werk,” influencing its adoption into Middle English. Therefore, in Middle English, the spelling changed to “werk,” which later changed to “work” as we know it today.

Courage

The word “courage” was once spelt “corage” in English. The old spelling got its roots from the Latin word “cor,” which means heart. Other influences for the spelling were from the Anglo-French spelling, “curage.” By the middle English era, “corage” was the right way of spelling the word, but by the end, of that era, the spelling had changed to “courage” as we know it today.

Choir

Until the 17th century, the spelling of “choir” was “quer” in English. Middle English also had another variation of “quer,” which was “quere.” At the same time, the spelling of “chorus” existed in Latin, and modern French had “choeur” to mean the same thing.

History suggests that middle English adopted the word “quer” directly from old French. But when the word changed the spelling in modern French to “choeur,” this also led to a spelling change in English that was due to association with the Latin word “chorus” and the modern French word “choeur.”

Fair

In Middle English, the word for “fair” was “fager.” Within the same period, it also had variations like “fayr” and “feir.”This spelling originated in the Proto-West Germanic word “fagr,” which means beautiful. This Proto-West Germanic word was the source for the same word in old Saxon, Old Norse, and Swedish. The Old Norse had adopted the spelling “fager.” Since many Middle English words were directly copied from this Nordic dialect, “Fagr” was adopted too in the language of those who spoke Middle English, and “fager” was adopted as another variation from Swedish speakers.

“Fager” and “Fagr” had similar pronunciations that gradually softened the “g” into a “y” to form the word “fayr.” The transition then became “feir.” By the end of the modern English era, the spelling had changed again to “fair.”

Wasp

Without confusing the word for Cardi B’s song, “waps” was the original spelling and pronunciation for the word “wasp”. In old English etymology, its pronunciation was “wæps.” However, “wasp,” as we use it, was closely related to its usage in Old French as “guespe” and Old northern French etymology as “waspe, wespe.”

Old English had an even earlier variation of “wæps,” which was “wæfs.” The change from “wæfs” to “wæps” can be attributed to an auditory illusion in which people heard the pronunciation of “f” as “p.” Furthermore, influences from Old French and German languages led to the evolution of the word in old English from “Waps” to “Wasp.”

Thunder

In Old English, the spelling of “thunder” used to be “thunor”. The “d” was not only silent, but it was entirely non-existent. The “e” was also an “o” instead, but it was not long before the word “Thuner” became the new spelling. This word belongs to a group of many other words that evolved due to the effects of human anatomy. When talking, moving from a nasal sound (m or n) to a non-nasal sound typically causes a consonant to pop up in between the letters.

In “thuner,” for instance, moving from “n” to “e” causes a consonant “d” to pop up in between the two letters. This pop-up sound is how “thuner” became “thunder” due to human anatomy’s influence on speech. The “d” in “thunder” is called epenthetic In etymology. Epenthesis is the addition of one or more sounds to a word. Therefore, this shows that several words have undergone epenthesis.

Empty

Similar to “thuner,” “emty” went through the same speech evolution and epenthesis because it had a nasal sound, “m,” followed by a non-nasal sound, “t.” Because of this, “Emty” became “Empty” by introducing a consonant between the two letters.

“Emty” was used in Middle English speech, originating from Proto-Germanic dialects. After making its way into the English language, years of English speaking and the speech anatomy of English speakers eventually introduced the “p” in the word to make the word “Empty” as we know it today.

Horse

“Horse” was initially spelt as “Hors”. This word was a Germanic word from the Proto-west German word, “*hors,” which influenced its adoption into old English.

Later on, other influences from Old Norse kept the word in Middle English because Middle English was strongly influenced by Old Norse vocabulary since English speakers then inherited a significant portion of Norse vocabulary directly from the Norse language.

Umpire

The spelling of “Umpire” was “Noumpere” in Middle English. The word came from the French word “-pere,” which means “equal.” This word is the root of similar English words like “peer.” Adding the prefix “Noum” causes the meaning to become “Not equal.”

When using the word in English, the fact that it was a noun meant that it was next to an indefinite article “a,” “an,” or the first person possessive noun, “mine.” This positioning created common phrases such as “a noumpere.” Over time, English eliminated the complicated letters, and the word evolved to “numpire,” but it did not stop there. People would eventually begin mistaking “a numpire” with “an umpire,” giving birth to the word “umpire” as we know it today.

Bird

The spelling for “Bird” was “Bridd”. Unlike many other words, this word lacks any origin from old Germanic or Nordic dialects. “Bridd” is exclusive to old English. In Middle and late Old English, “d” was dropped to form “Brid.” Later on, the positions of “r” and “i” would shift as a result of auditory illusion leading to the modern English version, “Bird.”

When

The spelling of “When” was “Hwonne” in old English. This word originated in the Proto-Germanic word “*hwan-.” In English, the word took on more than one variation with other spellings like “Hwanne” and “Hwenne.” Later on, middle English would shift the word to “Whenne,” which later became “When” in modern English.

Right

The irony of this word is that the correct way of saying this word is not right, according to old English. In old English, “Right” was spelt as “Riht.” Other variations of the same word in old English are “rihtan” and “rihte.”

“Right” also had different spellings in Old and Middle English. These spellings depended on whether it was as a noun, adjective, or verb. The noun spellings were “riht” or “reht.” The verb spelling was “rihtan,” and the adjective spellings had variations like “riht,” “rehte,” and “rihte.”

Apron

The word “Naperon” underwent multiple changes before it became “Apron”. In old and Middle English, “naperon” was adopted from the old French word “nappe,” which means “tablecloth.” The letter “e” was dropped first, and by the end of the middle English era, the spelling was “napron.”

As a noun, it was often used next to the indefinite article “a” for phrases like “a napron.” It was also common to use it next to the first person possessive noun, “mine,” forming statements like “mine napron.”

Eventually, this combination of definite articles or possessive nouns with this word led to a wrong division of the word, which was the dropping of the “n” at the beginning to form “apron.”

Adder

In Middle English speech, the word for Adder (meaning a snake) was “naddre”. It was also used in old English, although it was spelt differently as “naedre.” This word was of Germanic origin as it related to the German word “natter.”

As time progressed, the word lost its “n” during the Middle English era, much the same way as “apron” had lost its “n” in “napron.” This was also caused by the wrong division of the word due to its use in combination with the definite article “a.”

Not long after the word had lost its “n,” the spelling was also rearranged from “addre” to “adder,” which reflected English speech better.