orthography - Is there a term to describe words whose pronunciation bears little relationship to their spelling?


The English language is peppered with wonderfully weird spelling/pronunciation combinations. For example



  • colonel, pronounced kur-nl, probably my favorite, there isn't even an r in the word!

  • Gloucester, pronounced glos-ter

  • Worcestershire, pronounced woos-ter-sheer


And the list goes on, wikipedia has an extensive list of strangely pronounced spelled names here. No one unfamiliar with these words would be able to guess how to pronounce them, their pronunciation is usually the product of their particular history. Colonel, for example comes from the French colonel and has kept its original spelling but not its pronunciation.


So, is there a word to describe words whose pronunciation cannot be inferred from their spelling?



Answer



The Wikipedia article on the topic simply refers to these as irregularities, though one might also call them idiosyncrasies or anomalies - though none of those terms refer specifically to words with unusual spelling / pronunciation.


I think the best word to describe such irregularities is aphonetic, though that word seems relatively rare. I didn't find it listed in any dictionary, but here's an example from one of the documents in that Ngram search:


enter image description here


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