Why does debt have a b

But why would they do this? Why would anyone in their right mind reinsert a silent letter into a spelling? Well, because they knew Latin, the scribes understood that the root of "doubt" had a "b" in it.

Over time, even as fewer literate people knew Latin, the "b" was kept because it marked important, meaningful connections to other related words, like "dubious" and "indubitalbly," which were subsequently borrowed into English from the same Latin root, "dubitare". Understanding these historical connections not only helped us to spell "doubt," but also to understand the meaning of these more sophisticated words.

But the story doesn't end there. If we look even deeper, we can see beyond the shadow of a doubt, just how revealing that "b" can be. There are only two base words in all of English that have the letters "d-o-u-b": one is doubt, and the other is double. We can build lots of other words on each of these bases, like doubtful and doubtless, or doublet, and redouble, and doubloon. It turns out that if we look into their history, we can see that they both derive from the same Latin forms.

I know this is true because I read it on the Internet. Possible duplicate of Why does English spelling use silent letters? It was over 6 years ago to be fair however, so I hope you'll let me off. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. The etymology in my edition of the OED is given as follows, and confirms your suspicion.

Improve this answer. Noldorin Noldorin I ache over our receipt of such unsubtle reforms. Indict me, but I would take scissors to those manuscripts, flee to some arctic isle, and plumb them to the depths. There must be about 10 instances in that sentence I got ten too, hilarious! Featured on Meta. Now live: A fully responsive profile.

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