#27: Burn, Baby, Burn
One Twitter user, Kevin Partner, was reflecting on words and language while participating in National Novel Writing Month, aka #NaNoWriMo. He was thinking about the word “fiery” and realized the spelling is kind of weird and makes no sense according to our Modern English spelling rules. Why isn’t “fiery” spelled “firey”?
It’s a legit question, because “fire” isn’t spelled like “fier” so why would adding a “y” change the spelling? It turns out that an older version of English is the culprit once again. “Fire” was, in fact, spelled with an “ie” way back when. According to The Grammarphobia Blog, “fier” was the Middle English way to spell the word, and “fiery” withstood the test of time and still exists in our Modern English today.