{"id":8472,"date":"2013-04-12T14:40:08","date_gmt":"2013-04-12T14:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=8472"},"modified":"2013-04-12T14:40:08","modified_gmt":"2013-04-12T14:40:08","slug":"write","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=8472","title":{"rendered":"Write"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last night a friend asked me why the word write begins with a silent w, so I thought I&#8217;d investigate.<\/p>\n<p>According to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oed.com\/view\/Entry\/230750?rskey=gur0kB&#038;result=2&#038;isAdvanced=false#eid\">OED<\/a>, the word write comes from the Old English <a href=\"http:\/\/home.comcast.net\/~modean52\/oeme_dictionaries.htm\"><em>wr\u00edtan<\/em><\/a> (to incise, engrave, write, draw; bestow by writing). It is related to the Old Frisian <em>wr\u00eeta<\/em> (to score, write) and the Old Saxon <em>wr\u00eetan<\/em> (to cut, write), which all come from the from Proto-Germanic <a href=\"http:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/index.php?term=write\"><em>*writanan<\/em><\/a> (to tear, scratch).<\/p>\n<p>So it seems that the w goes back to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Proto-Germanic\">Proto-Germanic<\/a>, a reconstructed ancestor of all Germanic languages which is thought to have been spoken between about 500 BC and 500 AD.<\/p>\n<p>Does anyone know if the w in write used to be pronounced?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last night a friend asked me why the word write begins with a silent w, so I thought I&#8217;d investigate. According to the OED, the word write comes from the Old English wr\u00edtan (to incise, engrave, write, draw; bestow by writing). It is related to the Old Frisian wr\u00eeta (to score, write) and the Old [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-language"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8472\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}