Why is “February” spelled with two ⟨r⟩’s?

The word for February in Latin was Februarius, and at that point in time every letter was pronounced, including both ⟨r⟩’s. 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 first /r/ was pronounced in Latin, it was gone by the time the word got to English.

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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 newsletter for a while, you might have read about another case of etymological respelling as well—herb!

Why do the British pronounce “herb” with an /h/?

Why don’t Americans pronounce herb with an /h/?

Linguistic DiscoveryDaniel W. Hieber, Ph.D.

Here are some other examples:

• aisle
• debt
• doubt
• indict
• island
• plumber
• receipt
• salmon
• subtle

The silent consonants in those examples were pronounced in Latin but lost by the time those words got to English. Then they were later respelled to more closely resemble the original Latin.

What did the English call February before they borrowed the word from Old French? The word that roughly corresponded to that same time of year was solmonað, but scholars are unsure of its meaning. Possible meanings are ‘Mud Month’ (from sol ‘mud, wet sand’), or (according to Bede) ‘Cake Month’ because this was purportedly the time when Anglo-Saxons would offer cakes to their gods. (Given England’s weather at that time of year, I find the ‘Mud Month’ to be the most plausible.)

Here’s the etymological flowchart for February:

📖 Recommended Reading

📑 Sources

• Etymonline: February
• Wiktionary: February