This has bothered me for years and pops into my head here and there. Whenever I see the word triple my brain says it like the word “tripe” (the stomach of a cow that people eat)
Am I missing some rule that is used when it comes to spelling? Why is it Nipple and not Niple
Why no Tripple?
In: 5590
Don’t be fooled into thinking English spelling has *any* rules — it doesn’t^(1), that’s just something teachers tell young kids to help them learn to spell common words.
English spelling is entirely a product of its history. In the middle ages, there were general conventions for how to spell words, but nothing was standardized. With the invention of the printing press, all this non standard spelling became frozen in time. Spelling reflects both etymology and how words were pronounced in the 1400s and 1500s.
I’ve looked up the etymologies for the two words in question. *Nipple* seems to be germanic in origin, likely coming from the Old English word *neb*—which meant “the beak or bill of a bird”—where *neble* was the diminutive (read: cutesy) form. Since this was an Old English word, scribes simply would have written it roughly how it was pronounced, until the printing press froze the (edit: *most common*) spelling.
*Triple* comes from Latin *triplus* by way of Old French, and entered the language in the 1400s. Since it was a loan word, the spelling would have originally been similar to the French spelling. Since it entered the language in the 1400s, this spelling became frozen in time.
There are fun little quirks like this all throughout English.
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^(1)Not entirely accurate, but close enough for the point I’m making
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