Words with Silent T in them | A Comprehensive List

The History

So, where did the silent letters originate? They are Classical period relics, according to author Ned Halley. “As the Classical world’s influence grew stronger in the 15th century, English scholars wanted to remind their readers that the majority of the language’s vocabulary came from Latin and Greek. They added the b to show off their understanding of doubt, which was then written ‘dout’ because it came into medieval English via French doute and was derived initially from Latin dubitare. It was a nationalistic act in a sense, reasserting English’s Classical beginnings over the Dutch, French, German, and Norse influences of the millennium since Roman dominance diminished in Britain in the fifth century and Anglo-Saxon languages began to invade.”

Ursula Dubosarsky also has some thoughts on how silent letters have evolved: “Another thing to keep in mind is that many of today’s silent letters were not always silent. The word knight, for example, was once pronounced with the k and the gh sounded out (ke-nee-g-hht), as were many silent e’s and l’s in English.

A silent letter in an alphabetic writing system is a letter that in a word does not match to any sound in the word’s pronunciation.

A silent letter—a term used informally in English pronunciation—is a letter or letter combination of the alphabet that is frequently not uttered in a word. The b in subtle, the c in scissors, the g in design, the t in listen, and the gh in thinking are all examples.

Silent letters can be found in a lot of words. “Roughly 60% of words in English have a silent letter in them,” according to Ursula Dubosarsky, author of The Word Snoop (Dubosarsky 2008). Continue reading to learn about the many sorts of silent letters and how they effect pronunciation and language development in English.

Silent Letters Come in a Variety of Forms

A Survey of English Spelling author Edward Carney divides silent letters into two categories: auxiliary and dummy. He divides the two groupings into the following categories.

Auxiliary Letters

Auxiliary letters are part of a set of letters that spell a sound that isn’t represented by a single letter. As an example,

There’s /th/ thing /th/ there /sh/ share /zh/ treasure /ng/ song.” “

Dummy Letters

“There are two types of dummy letters: inactive letters and empty letters.

Inert letters are letters that are sometimes heard and sometimes not heard in a word segment. As an example,

resignation (g is not heard)

withdrawal (g is heard)

heinous (g is not heard)

(There is a g heard).”

“Like auxiliary letters and inactive letters, empty letters have no purpose. The letter u in the word gauge, for example, is blank. Silent consonants can be found in the following words:

d: bridge, ledge, edge c: indict ch: yacht

g: sign, design, assign, foreign

h: spaghetti, rhinoceros

knuckle, knee, knit, knob, knob, knob, knob, knob, knob, knob, knob, knob, knob, knob, knob, knob, knob, knob

m: mnemonic n: autumn, column l: calf, talk, could, should, would m: mnemonic

p: raspberry, receipt

t: castle, whistle

w: “answer,” “wrap,” “wring,” “wring,” “wring,” “wring,” “wring,” “wring,” “wring,” “wring,” “w (Carney 1994).

Silent letters are more difficult to predict than empty letters in new words. “There are no standards that we can apply to words with empty letters[;] you just have to use them and remember their spelling,” Strausser and Paniza, authors of Painless English for Speakers of Other Languages, say. (Strausser and Paniza 2007, for example).

IN CONNECTED SPEECH, ELIDED T

It’s also worth noting that in everyday speech, we elide (or erase) the T sound in a variety of cases, even though this isn’t the traditional pronunciation. When you look up the official definition of the word largely, you’ll notice that it has a T sound: /mstli/. In quick speech, however, we commonly leave out the T, just as we do in castle.

When specific words are combined, the same thing can happen. In the phrase just saying, for example, we frequently omit the T sound and say jus-saying.

There are various distinct patterns to be found here. Many of the terms have the -EN suffix and are verbs. This suffix is used to change an adjective into a verb. Soft, for example, is an adjective, while soften is a verb that implies “to soften.” Moisture is an adjective, and so on.

IS THE T IN WATCH COMPLETELY SILENT?

There are numerous lists of silent T words available online. Words ending in -TCH, such as watch and match, can be found on some. This is a little misleading. Take a look at the phonetic transcription, for example, and you’ll notice that there is a T sound in there: /wt/ and /mat/. That T sound is, of course, part of the CH sound, and may be found in words like attach: /tat/. However, labeling the T as quiet isn’t entirely correct. Perhaps unnecessary, but certainly not silent.

TCH is better thought of as a variant of CH that is occasionally necessary at the conclusion of specific words, similar to how we rarely conclude words with only a -K after a single vowel; instead, it usually becomes -CK. And I hope we don’t refer to that as a silent C!

A whistling from the quiet t! Listen!

The perplexing silent ‘t’. The ‘t’ – ‘tuh’ sound – is one of the most easily recognised and powerful sounds in the English language, but it vanishes in the middle of ‘listen’!

Instead, the ‘t’ is shortened to resemble another, shorter’s’: listen becomes ‘lissen,’ whistle becomes ‘whissle,’ and so on. Here are several more: hustle, jostle, apostle, bristle, thistle, or struggle are all words that come to mind when you think of the words hustle, jostle, apostle, bristle,

Finally, here’s a fun fact. This ‘t’ wasn’t silent for a long time. Many regional Englishes would have sounded this letter, but during the English Vowel Shift, which occurred from the late 1400s on, these regional abnormalities were softened up.

Words with Silent T

fasten - I fasten my coat before going outside.

hasten - Jim turned up the oven heat to hasten the cooking.

glisten - Frost can glisten in the sunlight.

listen - I like to listen to the radio in the car.

moisten - I moisten a cloth and clean the window.

apostle - Mark was an apostle of Christ.

thistle - Thistle flowers are beautiful.

whistle - The referee blew his whistle at the end of the game.

wrestle - We saw the policeman wrestle the burglar to the ground.

mortgage - We’ll need a bigger mortgage to buy a bigger house.

christmas - Christmas is a busy time of year.

Many words with a silent “t” have the suffix -stle at the end. Each word’s phonetic spelling aids with proper pronunciation.

Many words with silent “t” have -sten together at the end of the word.