Age makes no difference. Female Beauty is Female Beauty
Carlos said, 1727871284
Orson Carter said
Carlos said
tandi said
Bergman Greenstreet said
From delving into a dictionary I see that sprightly and spritely are both acceptable spellings these days. To my mind spritely seems the more logical variant as it derives from those lively and loveable creatures sprites. But then again, when was English ever logical.
looks like we are all having a slow day :-) I would have thought Sprite and Spritely would be obvious, but someone odd came along and inserted a "gh" and removed the "e" to catch out or possibly placate those pesky the Spelling Bees
Think sprightly is older as the ‘gh’ is a Normanisation of the Old English ‘ch’ (think Scottish loch end sound). Some parts of Scotland will still pronounce ‘gh’ as ‘ch’ as in “it’s a braw brecht moonlicht nicht the nicht”: it’s a nice bright moonlight night tonight. So knicht became knight under the Normans, for example. Who (or hwo in Old English) knows (k originally pronounced in Old English) whether the word in Old English for a fairy like person wasn’t Spricht?
Spritely probably came in around the time of the ‘Great Vowel Shift’ in the 1500s by which time ‘gh’ had become silent. At that time lexicographers were trying to bring spelling (set by printers in the previous century) into line with pronunciation. Some new spellings ‘took’ and replaced the old. Some got no traction at all. Some became common alternatives.
Here endeth the lesson.😂😂😂😂
Edited by Carlos
Interesting. Thank you.
All courtesy of my daily constitutional podcasts - all history - one of which is Kevin Stroud’s ‘The History of English’. I love it - even though, oddly enough, he is American and a lawyer, not a language specialist at all.
