Quote:
Originally Posted by FireHorse
Which reminds me… why does the U in "four" disappear for "forty"?
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English spelling evolved amid chaos and despair, no doubt due to the influence of the Evil Wizard Lord as a means to oppress the human population.
Before 1600, the OED cities a number of spellings: feuortig, feortiȝ, fuwerti, vourty (they really used a "u" for the "v"), fourty, fourthi, and fourtie. The actual pronunciation probably involved a dipthong, and maybe some regional vowel shifts, on top of the "eh, close enough" attitude toward spelling. But one speculation for the ascendance of "forty" is the King James Version of the Bible, from 1611. It uniformly spells the word "forty" (158 times, zero other spellings).