Kinney Brothers Publishing

ESL Teaching & Publishing

spelling variations

Fun Facts About English #44 – Queue

by

For most Americans, when we hear the word queue, a billiard game comes to mind, or the fear one may have missed a cue in the conversation. For those of us living on the plains who prefer line or braid, it’s good to reconnect with this queer little word and its even queerer spelling from across the pond.

queue:
1: a braid of hair usually worn hanging at the back of the head 2: a waiting line especially of persons or vehicles 3a: a sequence of messages or jobs held in temporary storage awaiting transmission or processing 3b: a data structure that consists of a list of records such that records are added at one end and removed from the other

As for the etymology, take my hand and I shall lead you through. Queue is from the Latin-derived, Old French word cue or coe meaning ‘tail’ and 12th-century slang for penis. Moving right along, the 14th century saw the meaning extended to the dangling wax seals of a letter and a medieval metaphor for a line of dancers. It was in literal use in the 16th century as the sometimes split tail of a lion frequently seen in heraldry (à la queue fourchée). Contemporary men’s braided ‘tails’ may find their parallel in fashionable 18th-century men’s wigs accented with queue extensions.

Medieval queue

Originally spelled cue, coe, or even keue in Old French, the word only started being spelled queue in the 12th century. Remember, spelling was not fixed in those days. Though the spelling queuing is ascending in popularity and preferred even by my spellcheck, queueing, with its unique string of five vowels, is more common in academic research fields, e.g., Queueing Systems.

If you enjoyed this post, you may also be interested in reading about the letter Z and why Americans say /zee/, the amazing history of the word Hello, or what happens if a word ‘rebrackets’ over time!

See the previous or next Fun Facts About English

Donald's English Classroom Fun Facts About English 44

Explore all the sight word activities available in Donald’s English Classroom! If you’re looking for worksheets, games, and flashcards, you’ll find a treasure trove of materials for your ESL classes!

Fun Facts About English #13 – Spelling Long ‘e’

by

Fun Facts About English 13 Kinney Brothers Publishing

The struggle with spelling that many people have is real. The “i before e” rule is an example where we often run into problems. According to Merriam-Webster, “The “i before e except after c” rule is highly inconsistent in the English language and should not be considered a solid rule.” The influence of different spelling paradigms that included Old German, Norse, and French, has resulted in an orthography that is less than tidy. In roughly three-quarters of all words with either an “ie” or an “ei” pair, the proper spelling is “ie,” as the rule would have you believe. The problem is the “except after c” aspect. In fact, the opposite is true: “cie” words outnumber “cei” words by about three to one.

With all this being said, when teaching young learners, it is helpful to have guiding principles, no matter how contradictory the rules may be as they become more sophisticated spellers. Children can be quite understanding if you just explain. Reading is by far the best way to expose kids (and adults!) to these inconsistencies and become familiar with various spellings.

Here are eight – but not all – ways to spell the long /e/ sound in English.

1. In some cases, the long /e/ sound is spelled with just the letter e. Though usually more than one syllable long, exceptions include words like me, be we, he, and she.  It is also used in the prefixes re-, be-, and de-.

Fun Facts About English 13

2. Many words spell the long /e/ sound with the letters ee. The long /e/ sound can appear in the beginning, middle, or end of the word.

Fun Facts About English 13

3. Using the letters ea is a common way of spelling the long /e/ sound.

Fun Facts About English 13

4. Sometimes the long /e/ sound is spelled with an e in the middle of the word and an e at the end of the word in a silent e or magic e form. These words are normally, but not always, more than one syllable long.

Fun Facts About English 13

5. In the case of ie words, the well-known ‘i before e except after c‘ spelling rule can apply to long /e/ sounds. Numerous exceptions to this rule include weird, either, leisure, and seize.

Fun Facts About English 13

6. These are examples where the ‘i before e except after c‘ rule applies when spelling the long /e/ sound.

Fun Facts About English 13

7. You’re probably familiar with these proper names that are spelled with the digraph ae and have a long /e/ pronunciation:

  • Aesop
  • Caesar

Here are some long /e/ words that have ae variant spellings:

Fun Facts About English 13

8. And finally, here are two words using eo to represent an explicit long /e/ sound:

  • people
  • theory

Whew! This covers the eight spelling variants in the sentence at the top of this post. I haven’t touched on long /e/ sounds that use y and i, such as happy or niche. We’ll save those for another Fun Facts About English.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also be interested in all the variant pronunciations of words spelled with -ough. Check out which letter in the dictionary has the most words or discover the most commonly used letter in the English language!

See the previous or next Fun Facts About English

Donald's English Classroom

Vocabulary Charts are a perfect reference for you and your students. Tacked to a classroom board or in student notebooks, charts provide a reference students will return to again and again. Check out all the vocabulary-building charts in Donald’s English Classroom!