Consonants that went to wrack and ruin
Write, wrong, wrist, wrath 鈥� these are among the oldest words in English. But they鈥檙e very different than they were in Anglo-Saxon English.
Staff
Why are so many common English words spelled with an initial w but pronounced as if they begin with an r sound? Write, wrong, wrist, wrath 鈥� these are among the oldest words in English. Like hw-, hr-, and kn-, wr- is one of 鈥測e olde鈥� consonant clusters that was pronounced in Anglo-Saxon English but has changed or disappeared in modern English.聽
Though today we don鈥檛 pronounce the k of knee, it鈥檚 pretty easy to do. Some dialects of English still pronounce the h of hw-, though now the letters are reversed in words such as what and when. (My first grade teacher insisted that which and witch were not homonyms, to the great confusion of the children in her class, in whose dialect they were homonyms.) But if you were going to pronounce each letter, how would you say wr, or, even worse, wl, which occurred in Old English words like wlanc (鈥渂old; splendid鈥�) and wlite (鈥渇ace; beauty鈥�)?聽
The Oxford English Dictionary speculates that these clusters were hard to say even for Anglo-Saxons, and cites spellings such as werritt for writ as evidence of 鈥渆arly difficulty in pronouncing the combination.鈥� The unwieldiness has led some linguists to argue that both letters in these pairs were not pronounced.
Philologist Donka Minkova makes a convincing argument that Anglo-Saxons were indeed pronouncing both letters, stumbling over write, wreath, and so on. She looks at Anglo-Saxon and medieval alliterative verse 鈥� poems that are structured by the repetition of the initial sounds of words, not by rhyme. A 12th-century poem, Layamon鈥檚 鈥淏rut,鈥� for example, contains lines such as 鈥渉e letten writen a writ; & wel hit lette dihten鈥� (鈥渉e had a well-written writ written鈥�). The poem 鈥淐leanness鈥� has an even more alliterative line: 鈥淲lonk whit watz her wede,鈥� something like 鈥淲ondrous white was what they wore.鈥澛�
By the 15th century, the w sound was disappearing, which led to a spelling free-for-all. If you weren鈥檛 pronouncing the w, then why use it? So wrong appeared as 鈥渞ong鈥� and wring as 鈥渞inge.鈥� Conversely, if some r words began with a silent w, why not all of them? So 鈥渞athe鈥� (an old word for 鈥渁dvice鈥�) could be wrath, and 鈥渞unkel鈥� could be wrinkle.
These words were standardized into their current forms in the 18th century, and we now have no trouble remembering which words begin with w 鈥� except with rack and wrack. As we talked about in another column, why do we insist on sticking wrack where rack belongs? It seems to me that the archaic tone of nerve-racking must play a part. Though this word was first used in the 20th century, it sounds old-fashioned, and ye olde wr- consonant cluster seems more appropriate.