English spelling origin (OT?)

[Peter Richardson]

Fabulous, Peter. It fairly trips off the tongue.

On Thu, 12 Dec 2002, Peter A. McGraw wrote:

> Sigh!  O.k., here goes:
>
> But their, weird, either
> Foreign, seize and neither,
> Leisure, forfeit and height,
> Science, abortifacient, [fill in the remaining 397 "cie" entries here]
> And Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park
> Are exceptions spelled right.
>
> There, that should take care of it! :)
>
> Peter Mc.
>
> --On Thursday, December 12, 2002 1:44 PM -0500 "James E. Clapp"
> <j.clapp at EARTHLINK.NET> wrote:
>
> > For what it's worth, Random House Unabridged Dictionary on CD-ROM
> > shows 8685 entries containing either "ie" or "ei", of which 73% are
> > "ie".  Interestingly, that percentage holds (actually increases to
> > 74%) following "c":  400 "cie" entries (from "abortifacient" to
> > "Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park") vs. 139 entries
> > containing "cei" (from "absolute ceiling" to "wide receiver").
> > Those could be studied in detail to sort out the principles
> > involved.
>
>
>
> ****************************************************************************
>                                Peter A. McGraw
>                    Linfield College   *   McMinnville, OR
>                             pmcgraw at linfield.edu
>