The number 40 is spelled forty despite the fact that four contains a Friend. Although it is often misspelled fortyThe only widely accepted spelling of this number is forty.
Hello everyone. We have an announcement. We are happy/sorry to announce that there never was Friend IN forty.
That’s right: the number 4 is fourbut ten times it’s 40, spelled forty. This is true in all of the English language at large, although it is rumored that British English users prefer the same word color (they don’t), and although typos do appear frequently.
Read on to see its many spellings through the ages.
In related events, the number 14 holds Friend: it is written as fourteen. But forties correlated with fortyso it doesn’t have a Friend.
There is no good explanation for why forty missing one Friend that its close relationship four Have. Forty simply, like Spelling American English Author DW Cummings calls it “an acceptable but grammatically incorrect spelling.” However, it is also a relatively new spelling.
Origins and spelling variations
While from forty dating back to the earliest period of the language, it has been written in different ways over the centuries and is currently written forty only from the 16th century. The Oxford English Dictionary includes a number of spellings that precede it. The Old English word (English that existed from the 7th century to about 1100) has the following:
féowertig
féowurtig
feudatory
But everything really happened in Middle English—English that existed between the 12th and 15th centuries. In texts from that period, the OED notes the following spellings:
Walker
enemy
fowerti (and fowerti)
feouwerti
feuwerti (and fuwerti)
Anger
feowrti
forty
four people
vourti
delicious
fortress
forty
poor
Wednesday
Wednesday
Modern English gives us other options:
forty
forty
forty
forty
Eddy
The winner, of course, is forty, almost the last of the bunch. Reasonable English relic forty, which hides most of that long list, which lasted until the 18th century, when, for unknown reasons, it ceased to be used. Sometimes that’s just the way it goes in English.
Presenter:
DW Cummings, Spelling American English (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), pgs. 28, 31.
“forty.” OED online, https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/73764. Oxford University Press. Accessed September 24, 2019.
Categories: Usage Notes
Source: vothisaucamau.edu.vn
