| 词组 | height |
| 释义 | height There are two problems here. The first is spelling. This word was originally formed in Old English from the Old English version of high and the suffix -th; the formation is exactly analogous to breadth, width, and length. The spellings heighth and highth are, therefore, the purest from the standpoint of etymology. However, they have been replaced in prevalent standard use by height. Height comes into use by way of northern English dialects. The OED tells us that the th after the sound our gh used to stand for was pronounced \\\\t\\\\ in the north and \\\\th\\\\ in the south. As a result, northern spelling had no final h while southern spelling did. Milton spelled the word highth. But the northern version has come to prevail in modern use. Highth seems to have dropped out of use altogether, but heighth persisted into the first half of the 20th century at least, and is still occasionally used to stand for the pronounciation \\\\hītth\\\\ Even though heighth and highth are etymologically pure and are not errors, we recommend that you stick to the mainstream spelling height. Pronunciation is a different matter. The modern \\\\'hītth\\\\ is a bit of a phonological curiosity in itself, being a sort of combination of the more usual \\\\'hit\\\\ and an older and apparently mostly disused \\\\'hīth\\\\, which would have been used for highth. It may have been influenced by the usual pronunciation of eighth. It is, however, a pronunciation too widespread among the highly educated and the highly placed to be considered anything but a standard variant. If it is your natural pronunciation, stick with it. |
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