hour, honor, honest, herb silent h



Rascal the Cat was stranded for an hour by the barking dog.
Thomas Bewick (1753-1828) carved this picture on wood,
 then dipped the wood in ink before pressing it on paper.

The h in hour has not been spoken since the days of the Roman gladiators. The Greek spelling for hour was hora. Originally the Greek word hora referred to seasons of the year.

Maybe horticulture (spoke h) which refers to the planting of food crops comes from hora. Look at the Greek word for garden: hortus.

An ancient word from India was the base for hora: yer. Year, comes to us from yer.

Honor comes to us from the Latin word, honorem, and Old French, honor. The letter h was kept for spelling, even after people stopped saying it. Look at the honor word family:

honor       honored         honorable           honorably          horonary

honors     honoring        dishonorable      dishonorably      honorarium 

honest   honesty    honestly     dishonest     dishonestly  
     
An honorarium is a small fee paid to someone for a speech or a special appearance.

Herb can be said with or without the h sound. The French picked up the word from the Roman soldiers who spoke Latin and spelled it herba. The French may have misheard the word. The French spelled it: erba.

Hubris comes to us from the Greek hybris, meaning behaving with too much pride, behaving with arrogance. Word historians, called etymologists, trace hybris back to ancient India. 

Ancient India used gweri, which meant to rush into doing something without considering one's actions carefully, behaving impetuously. Hubris is given the h sound in the dictionary but is also accepted without the h sound.

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You may like to look at my books, all of which blend tricky phonics with a special comprehension method to give your child a rapid boost into excellent reading. All my books teach the lessons in a wide-range of word-difficulty levels so that your child can soar.

I use eBay as my website. Search Instant Reading Help all of my books will pop up for you. Have fun reading with your child. Thank you, Mary Maisner