We all know about the common “silent e,” but which letters in English are silent at least in some words? “Silent” is, I realize, not a fully well-defined term, but I mean a letter that is not pronounced (rather than just pronounced in a distorted way, as the first “l” in “colonel”). I exclude situations where two letters in a row have the same sound, for instance the last two letters in “bass” or “clock”; I do not treat either as silent. A word is acceptable if it (and the pronunciation that shows the letter’s silence) is listed as an English word in any standard online dictionary. Don’t complain that the word is “really foreign” because it’s borrowed from a foreign language. Most English words were borrowed from some other language.
I’ve put up my current tentative answer here; e-mail me if you have words that match some of the letters for which I don’t yet have words. No need to send any words for letters for which I already have words, unless the current word is potentially controversial, and the replacement is open-and-shut.
UPDATE: Got lots of e-mails, too many to respond to all individually, I’m afraid, though I appreciate all of them. We now have everything except f, q, and v. “Lacquer” and such don’t qualify, I think, for the same reason that “dock” doesn’t qualify; “halfpenny” is possible for “f” (thanks to Ken Hirsch), and, surprisingly, “fifth,” but apparently both are sometimes pronounced with the f and sometimes without; “chef d’oeuvre” and “roman a clef” are listed by my New Shorter Oxford as still being foreign phrases; “marijuana” is the only one for “j,” and I’m looking for something better. So if you have genuine silent f’s, silent j’s, silent q’s, and silent v’s, let me know.
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