Learn English – How did the “h” get in “gherkin”

etymologysilent-letters

I've recently taken an interest in silent letters, and I discovered that the letter h in ghost was inserted by a faulty printer. On a search for similarly romantic etymologies, I ran into gherkin, from the archaic word gerkin, which stems from the Danish term gurken (according to Wiktionary and Etymonline). Is the story of the suddenly appearing h another such malfunction, folk etymology, or something else? Thanks.

Best Answer

Gherkin:

  • 1660s, from early modern Dutch gurken, augurken (late 16c.) "small pickled cucumber," from East Frisian augurk "cucumber."
  • The Dutch suffix is perhaps the diminutive -kin, though some regard it as a plural affix, with the Dutch word mistaken for a singular in English. The -h- was added 1800s to preserve the hard "g" pronunciation.

(Etymonline)

Related reading:

Why are “Ghost,” “Ghastly,” and “Ghoul” Spelled with “gh”?:

  • "Gh" is a strange way for an English word to start. There are only a handful of commonly used words that begin with this spelling. Beyond the spirit cluster of ghost, ghastly, and ghoul, we have borrowed words like ghetto, gherkin, and ghee, some place names like Ghana and Ghent, and that’s about it.

  • “Ghoul” was borrowed into English in the 1700s from the Arabic ghul, but at first without the "h," as “goul” or “goule.” It was later lured over to the ‘gh’ group by its semantic similarity to “ghost.”

  • But how did ghost get its "gh"? Compared to the other "gh" words, “ghost” is both a lot more frequent and a lot older, going all the way back to Old English gást. Until the 1500s, over a few centuries of language change, it was spelled gast, gæst, gost, goste, goost, and goist. “Ghastly” from the related, Middle English gastliche, also came in "h"-free spellings until the 1500s.

  • We can trace the introduction of the "h" in ghost and ghastly back to William Caxton, the man who brought the printing press to England. He had established his first press in Bruges, and he brought some Flemish typesetters back with him when he returned to set up business in Westminster.

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