"jail fever", 1720

[Joel S. Berson]

At 5/8/2013 08:56 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>But then there are all sorts of variant spellings, including
>"iaile", "iayll", etc., which suggests not just softening of the
>velar but its total disappearance (in some areas, at least).

Isn't the initial I in these used for J, so the soft velar is still
present?  All the instances of these two forms in the OED are 1631 or earlier.

Joel

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