Bomb, Comb, Womb, Tomb

[Paul Johnston]

Dear Martin,
It;s complicated here...

Bomb:  Came in from French bombe or Spanish bomba in the 1500's, apparently with a short vowel, though there are spellings like boom around, and a pronunciation equal to bum was accepted in some forms of British English.

Tomb:  From a Norman French form toumbe, so it was taken in already witjh the vowel it has now.  This combination /u:m/ seems to be exempt from the Great Vowel Shift --room had the same vowel.

Comb and Womb once had the same vowel, an Old English long /A:/, the same vowel as stone, no, etc. (and they still do in Scots, cf. kame, wame).  Comb develops normally.  The /w/ before the vowel  raised it to an /o:/, the vowel in moon, do, already in Middle English, and the Great Vowel Shift then applied to it, giving you the same vowel as tomb in the end, just as moon, do have.

The spelling problems arise because we don't really have consistent ways of showing short from long vowels before /mb/, and Middle English didn't constently distinguish a long OPEN /O:/ which comb had from a long close /o:/ which womb had, and our orthography generally ignores the Great Vowel Shift.

The Oxford English Dictionary has all the details.

Yours,
Paul Johnston
On Dec 10, 2011, at 8:53 AM, Martin Kaminer wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Martin Kaminer <martin.kaminer at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Bomb, Comb, Womb, Tomb
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> My son the gifted future linguist asked me last night about the origin
> of long o in tomb (& womb) as opposed to the short o in bomb and comb.
> All words with ancient origins.  I didn't have an answer for him.
> Selective application of the Great Vowel Shift?  Any enlightening
> suggestions welcomed.
>
> TX
>
> MK
>
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