Why Does “Island” Have a Silent “S”? Because Scholars Couldn’t Stop Themselves

A middle-schooler in Waukesha, Wisconsin, wonders why the word island contains the letter S, and why is it pronounced with a long I and no S sound? In Old English, this word for dry land surrounded by water was igland, coming from words that mean “water” or “watery land.” In Middle English, it was spelled iland or yland. Later, English scholars mistakenly assumed that the word came not from its Germanic source, but from French isle, or “island.” They began spelling the English word as isle-land, and by the 17th century island. The French word was previously spelled ile, but scholars suspected it derived from the Latin word for “island,” insula, and added the letter S to make it look more like Latin. The S was later dropped, although its former presence is reflected in the circumflex in the modern French word, île. For an entertaining and helpful history of such spelling irregularities, check out Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don’t Rhyme―And Other Oddities of the English Language (Bookshop|Amazon) by linguist Arika Okrent. This is part of a complete episode.