Indictment is such a funny word, isn't it?

[conuly]

It's the silent c. Why does it even have a silent c? Or, for that matter, a long i? Dictator is pronounced as I'd expect, as is predict, all those other words from dicere. I always want to pronounce the c, and half the time my tongue moves into /k/ position, but I don't think I ever realize it, I just sorta stutter a bit.

But then, it's not a word that comes up often for most of us, is it?

It certainly has come up today, and for a minute I can believe everything is coming up roses. Mirabile dictu!

Comments

[silveradept]

Someone with more linguistic background than I can probably talk about the presence of silent consonants and what it says about the origins of the word and what societies it may have gone through to get to the current form, because there's a lot of "Germanic words changed to sound more [Z]" and "borrowed wholesale from another language with different vowel and consonant rules" and "borrowed wholesale from another language, but rendered phonetically and then eventually reified."

I have a feeling that there are going to be more lookups for related words to indictment as a particularly high-profile one passes through the public consciousness. Be on the lookout for more armchair lawyers throwing out Latin, perhaps?