how the rank “colonel” is pronounced “kernel” despite having any R’s? Is there history with this word that transcends its spelling?

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In: 414

Answer 1

I always liked how Bill Bryson put it in *The Mother Tongue*:

>*Colonel* is perhaps the classic example of this orthographic waywardness. The word comes from the old French *coronelle*, which the French adapted from the Italian *colonello* (from which we get *colonnade*). For a century or more both spellings and pronunciations were commonly used, until finally with inimitable illogic we settled on the French pronunciation and Italian spelling.