Silent b is introduced in the word 'lamb'. To help remember this silent letter, there is a story of how the word was originally spelt – lambaz – in old Germanic. Over time the 'baz' at the end of the word was dropped from the pronunciation but the 'b' remained in the spelling of the word.
What is the origin of the silent 'b' at the end of English words such as lamb, comb, crumb and bomb? WE OWE the silent 'b' to the fact that centuries ago our ancestors pronounced a b-sound: climb was Old English climban, and bomb comes from Italian bomba. The b-sound was lost by about 1300.
Most silent b's come at the ends of words and just after m: bomb, climb, comb, crumb, dumb, lamb, limb, numb, plumb, thumb, tomb. Just when one starts to feel comfortable with the relative regularity of these, debt and subtle show up like a couple of toughs.
There is only one letter in the language that is never silent. Can you guess what it is? The letter is V! There are various very valuable v-words, and that V is never silent!
The letter"L" is silent in salmon.
The letter L is silent in the words including should, could, would, half, calf, chalk, talk, walk, folk, and yolk. The silent L in the word salmon is also pretty fishy.
Even unusual letters like Z and J are silent in words that we have adopted from foreign languages, such as marijuana (originally a Spanish word) and laissez-faire (French). But as Merriam-Webster Dictionary points out, one unusual letter is never silent: the letter V.
Silent H. H is always silent in HONOUR, HOUR, HONEST, HEIR, VEHICLE & VEHEMENT. You don't say it after 'g' in GHOST, GHASTLY, AGHAST, GHERKIN & GHETTO, or after 'r' in RHINOCEROS, RHUBARB, RHYME and RHYTHM.
First, note that, in 'earth', there is no E /e/ that you have in 'ate'. Besides, there is no T in its pronunciation, although it is present in the spelling. Rather, what we have is the long form of the low A (ERR), plus the thither sound TH, which we have in month, length, three etc.
Grammarist. The idiom is on the lam, not on the lamb. The exact origins of this sense of lam are unknown, but it's believed to be a late 19th-century U.S. slang term. It was originally a verb meaning to escape, and it's still occasionally used in that sense, but today it mostly functions as a noun.
Lamb vs sheep
Lamb is the name given to the meat from a young sheep, and is also the name given to the animals themselves, up until one year of age. After this, lambs are referred to as hoggets, but the meat will sometimes still be sold as “lamb”.
The sound a lamb or calf makes is a bleat. If you hear tiny bleats coming from your barn, you'll know the new baby goats were born at last. Many animals might bleat, though a bleat is a slightly weak, high-pitched sound, which is why it's typically made by young animals.
A: The “l” in “almond” was silent until very recently. That's the only pronunciation (AH-mund) given in our old 1956 printing of the unabridged Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language (2d ed.).
The L after /ɔː/ and /ɑː/ and before a consonant is silent in many words like calm, walk, talk, half, calm etc.
w. Again, often silent at the start of words, before the letter 'r' or, in some question words, before the letter 'h' for example wrong, write, and who. There are some common words which have a silent 'w' in the middle of the word, for example, answer and two.
In the word, 'scissors', the 'c' is silent. You don't get to hear the pronunciation of the 'letter c'.
As The Independent nicely says it, "Silent Letters are the ghosts of pronunciations past." Older versions of these words had pronounced Ns. Most of them come to English from Latin. For example autumn comes from the Latin autumnus and column comes from the Latin columna. In these words, the N was pronounced.
Silence does not mean "Yes, I agree." Silence can mean: I'm still thinking about it. I may agree but am not sure yet.
There is a silent "d" in the word "Wednesday" .
Silent D: The letter D is silent when it comes just before the letters N and G. Examples: Wednesday, pledge, grudge, cadge. The letter D is also not pronounced in the following common words: handsome, handkerchief, sandwich.
As Wōdnesdæg moved from Old English to Middle English, its spelling changed. It became "Wednesdei" and the "d" remained, even as the word morphed into "Wednesday." Wednesday is just one example of words — like February and ptarmigan — where letters appear in a word's spelling but not in its pronunciation.
Letter 'b' is silent in 'plumber'. Letter 'b' is generally not pronounced if letters 'm' and 'b' occur together in a word. Examples : plumb, comb, tomb, plumber etc. This rule is applicable when letters 'm' and 'b' are the parts of the same syllable.