Why is “February” spelled with two ⟨r⟩’s?
Why is “February” spelled with two ⟨r⟩'s even though most people only pronounce one of them?
Why is “February” spelled with two ⟨r⟩'s even though most people only pronounce one of them?
Prefer a video version of this post? Watch here!
The word in Latin was Februarius, and at that point in time every letter was pronounced, including the ⟨r⟩. But by the time English borrowed the word from Old French in the late 1300s, it was pronounced Feverer or Feoveral. So even though that /r/ was pronounced in Latin, it was gone by the time the word got to English. English has never pronounced it with an /r/.
However, February is one of those words which underwent etymological respelling, where scholars during the Renaissance changed the spelling of the word to match its original Classical Latin or Greek spelling, even though the word was no longer pronounced that way. If you've been following the blog, you recently read about another case of etymological respelling as well—herb!
Daniel W. Hieber, Ph.D.
Here are some other examples:
