Interesting Stuff

We’ve all heard of people discussing whether or not ‘gruntled,’ ‘whelmed,’ ‘combobulated,’ &c are real words. The only thing I can add to that debate is that ‘whelmed’ is a real word, and it means ‘engulfed or submerged.’ What I’m more intrigued by are words that actually have valid counterparts that no one ever uses.¹ This topic came to my attention as I sat on my balcony enjoying the clement weather, and investigating it has turned my understanding of English etymology into a ravelled web once again. I want to say I’m exasperated by this, but I never started with any asperity, so I haven’t really run out of it yet.

Even more interesting, though, are the false positives. I know many people whom I consider experts in their fields, but I doubt many of them are former perts. I imagine that most discomfiture is not due to a lack of comfits. I may be decanting odd words at you, but it’s better than canting them. What a strange language we speak!

1: I admit, the dangling preposition has its place. I considered writing “By what I’m more intrigued are words…” but that was too much even for me.

Lots of letters can be silent in English, but I’m missing a few. Can anyone help fill in the rest of this table? Proper nouns are cheating. So is “February.”

Edit: words in italics were found by minorninth at this page. To be honest, though, I’d like better ones for Q and Y.

• A – boat
• B – numb
• C – scissors
• D – adjective
• E – made
• F –
• G – gnaw
• H – through
• I – piece
• J –
• K -knew
• L – talk
• M – mnemonic
• N – damn
• O – leopard
• P – psychic
• Q – lacquer
• R –
• S – island
• T – often
• U – fugue
• V –
• W – who
• X – faux
• Y – prayer
• Z – rendezvous