Why don’t we pronounce the letter b in the word subtle? The word derives ultimately from Latin subtilis, meaning “fine, delicate,” and was adopted into Middle English from Old French as sotil. The b was later added back in so that the spelling reflected the word’s original Latin roots but the pronunciation continued to lack the b sound. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Why Don’t We Pronounce the B in “Subtle”?”
Hi, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Emma. I’m calling from New Orleans.
Hi, Emma. Welcome to the show. What’s up?
So the other day, a friend and I were kind of discussing and singing a song at work.
I came home and I was listening it to my by myself, and I noticed this very subtle use of xylophone, and I wanted to text her about it.
So when I went to write the word subtle, I started to type S-U-T-T-L-E.
And then autocorrect kicked in, and then, of course, put the right spelling, S-U-B-T-L-E.
And it made me think, oh, yeah, subtle has a B in it, which I always thought was a really funny word to have a silent letter.
Because you could say that the B is very subtle in a way.
But then I was also telling my mom the same story, and she said, yeah, I guess I would have spelled it S-U-B-T-L-E,
Which I found interesting. I guess I say subtle, and she says more subtle.
But it got me thinking about the word. Why does it have this silent B?
What are its origins? And if other languages speak it, do they say the B?
Oh, this is really good, because there’s something curious that happened to English.
Just the history of subtle is important. We got it from the French,
And the French spelled it S-O-T-I-L at the time we borrowed it, and it has the same meaning.
And they got it from Latin, where in Latin, it was spelled with a B, S-U-B-T-I-L-I-S, and with generally the same meaning.
However, there was this period in, how should we put this, English language arts, where all of the finest minds decided that Latin was the best language.
And any word that we had in English, which we knew to be derived from Latin, should look a little more like the Latin word that it came from.
So they inserted the B in subtle.
It’s called remodeling.
They remodeled the word by putting the B back in it.
And we didn’t do it just with subtle.
We did it with doubt, D-O-U-B-T, and we did it with debt, D-E-B-T.
And there were some other words as well that we’ve done this.
Now, sometimes we add letters in just because it’s a quirk of a pronunciation that we want the sound there,
Even if it’s not there originally, like putting the B in thimble, which didn’t originally have the B.
But in this case of these three words, we just said, oh, yeah, Latin.
We got to go back to that original form and make it look more like the Latin word.
How interesting. It always seems to be a B that sneaks in there, all those words that you said.
When they pronounced it in Latin, when you were speaking Latin, would they say it with a B, or was that always silent?
I have a Latin expert here in the studio with me, Martha.
Yes, indeed. In fact, the word goes back to a couple of different words.
The Latin word suptilis, it has to do with a web and sort of fine, fine, fine material.
And possibly related to the word text, T-X-T, right? And some other words.
Subtilla.
Subtilla, yeah.
How interesting.
Well, I love that explanation.
It’s just art then, isn’t it?
Yeah.
It’s art.
It’s really, we hung a bee on the wall of the room, and we don’t really use it, but it looks nice.
I like what you’ve done with the place.
Yeah, I just put the bee off.
I’m glad you like that.
But don’t say it, yeah.
We don’t talk about that.
Well, thank you guys so much.
Emma, thank you.
Appreciate it.
Bye-bye.
Of course.
Bye.
Bye.
Latin is not a perfect language.
No.
It’s not, I don’t think objectively or subjectively can be proven to be better than English.
Is any language better than English?
Well, the question is, they always, for years, how many years did they try to make English, you know, like the myth, the language myth about not breaking up the infinitive verbs, right?
To boldly go, right?
Oh, right, right, or not ending a sentence with a preposition.
These are things you can’t do in Latin, and so people decided you shouldn’t do them in English, and that’s ridiculous.
Yes.
They’ve never been accurate or true.
It’s just these weird myths passed along.
Yes, I’ve seen it described as trying to fit the swollen foot of English into the two tight shoes of Latin grammar.
That’s great. That’s perfect.
Ouch.
