Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.

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To distinguish between the word woman and women, we change the A to an E, but only change the pronunciation on the O. (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 month ago by JeSuisUnHombre@lemm.ee to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world

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w(uh)man to w(ih)men

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[–] ornery_chemist@mander.xyz 4 points 1 month ago

Best I can tell from quick internet searches: Old English: wīfmann/menn ("female person/s"). The w rounded the following vowel giving a wo- pronunciation, which for some reason (umlaut?) stuck for the singular but not the plural. The spelling of the plural changed to match that of the singular in spite of the pronunciation.

* Everything here carries the caveat "in some dialects, ..." because English