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Reading for curious families
Word curiosities
Short stories about English words: why spellings look the way they do, where odd names come from, and which famous facts turn out to be myths. Each article lists the sources its facts come from.
Why does English have silent letters?
Why is there a k in knight and a b in debt? Most silent letters were once sounds people said. A few were added by writers and never spoken at all.
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Collective nouns for animals: which do people really use?
A pride of lions, a gaggle of geese, a murder of crows. Which animal group names do people really use, and where did the fancy ones come from?
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Does “i before e except after c” actually work?
The spelling rule works for words where ie or ei says “ee”, like field and receive. Here is the small print, and why their and science don't count.
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What are homographs? Same spelling, different word
Homographs are spelt the same but mean different things, like a bow on a gift and a bow on a stage. Some sound alike and some don't. Here's how they work.
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Why does “ough” have so many sounds?
In British English, ough makes at least seven sounds, as in rough, cough, though, through, thought, plough and thorough. Here's how that happened.
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