To say or spell indict –
or, even worse, indictment –
could lead to much excictment
but not so much insict…
If spelling’s your delict,
you know that dereliction
could lead to interdiction
if you don’t keep it tict.
If out loud you indite,
pay close heed to the diction
lest you pronounce a fiction
due to an eye-tongue fict.
But if you will recict
and wrict as indicated,
you will be vindicated –
not derelict but delict.
Pay heed to my invict
and you’ll be an invictus,
your face a grinning rictus
because you did it rict.
Ah, isn’t English spelling a treasure? Sure, like a treasure-hunt in a sandbox – one that’s in current use as a kitty litter box.
But actually the offending nuggets are not so fresh. Most of the worst booby-traps in English orthography came about during and after the English Renaissance (i.e., the time of Shakespeare and thereafter), when various scholars felt that English words that were descended from Latin ought to wear their fine ancestry on their sleeves. (See “What’s up with English spelling?”) The idea that spelling should simply reflect sound was too plebeian; orthography offers such a panoply of finery, why not come out in full dress, unburdened by quotidian chores? 太好了! 你學吧!
So we had a word endyte or endite coming from Old French enditer, which in turn came from Latin in plus dictare ‘say, declare’, and the scholarly pedants of the time felt that it should therefore claim its nobility and sit on the page as indict. The same fellows gave us the o in people (because of Latin populum) and the b in debt (because of Latin debitum).
I do not think we owe a det of gratitude to these peple. I would rather see them indicted.
But not indited. You see, the unaltered spelling indite also persisted, with a slightly different sense: ‘dictate; enjoin; compose; put in words; recite’. It’s a word of literature now, and a rather high-toned precious one. Meanwhile, indict is a word known to the basest members of society. Oh, the irony.
Thanks to Iva Cheung for reminding me that I wanted to taste this one.
Sesquiotica 