| I used the term "snob" in quotes because that's the term used in the linked-to article. Here are the relevant parts: > Okrent mostly attributes English’s idiosyncrasies to the barbarians, the French, the printing press, and what she calls “the snobs.” ... > At other times, standardization was deliberate. Those whom Okrent labels “snobs,” primarily 18th-century linguists, publishers, and pedants addicted to “intentional meddling,” consciously manipulated the language. Their meddling included the introduction of the supposedly sophisticated silent letters in doubt, indict, receipt, and salmon, as well as the Hellenized spellings of medical terms that originated as diaria, asma¸ and fleume. Nearly all sources I can find point to that same Etymonline entry. My understanding is more like https://www.quora.com/Which-language-is-responsible-for-the-... : > British pedants, making a wrong guess, as they often did. Surprisingly, isle and island do not have the same origin. ... > Isle comes from the French île (courtesy of the Normans). In Middle English it was spelled ile or ille. .. > This ultimately comes from the Latin insula, and in Renaissance France some pedants tried to change it to isle, but ultimately failed. ... > British pedants had more success, having decided that spellings should indicate classical origins at the expense of pronunciation. This had the advantage that it made spelling harder for those without the benefit of a classical education, and provided an opportunity for schoolboys to mock their lesser colleagues. > They had some justification for isle (though it was a stupid rule). However, they also changed iland to island, incorrectly assuming common origins. The "indicate classical origins" is from the (false) belief that this word came from Latin. https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/349393/dictionar... quotes the OED as: > The ordinary Middle English and early modern English form was iland, yland. ... In 15th cent. the first part of the word began to be associated with the synonymous ile, yle (of French origin), and sometimes analytically written ile-land; and when ile was spelt isle, iland erroneously followed it as isle-land, island; the latter spelling became established as the current form before 1700. |