Completing "The Chaos" Trivia Quiz

Answer:

As a mongrel language that has borrowed from an array of different sources, the pronunciation of English words when compared to the spelling can vary significantly (not to mention plenty of local variation owing to accents). A large part of this is down to the Great Vowel Shift that occurred between 1400 and 1700 in England, at about the time that the written language began to get standardised, leading to a gap between how words are spelled and spoken. "The Chaos" was a poem written from the perspective of an outsider trying to get to grips with this by Dutchman Gerard Nolst Trenité under the pseudonym, Charivarius.

The history of the word "horse" (pronounced horss) is lost to posterity but it comes from an Old English word "hors" that possibly comes from the Latin verb for "to run". Its paired word "worse" (pronounced wurss) comes from the Old English word "wyrsa", an adjective that was related to "war".

"Sew" meaning "to attach with stitches", rhymes with the "po" of "poet" rather than "new". It has a Germanic root from the verb "siwan", with its meaning unchanged since entering the English language.

"Heard" is an irregular past participle of the verb "to hear", a homophone of the word "herd". It comes from the Old English "hieran", which was of Germanic origin. Its modern spelling is likely to have come about to show that it is linked to "hear" and has a different meaning to its homophone.

"Lord" (rare for this quiz, pronounced as it is written) comes from the Old English "hlafweard" meaning "bread-keeper". This denoted the head of a household and over time came to mean those with dominion over large tracts of land.

"Britain", pronounced "BRIT-uhn" is derived from "Britannia" the name the ancient Romans gave to "the place of the Britons" although its earliest known use was much later in the Middle English period (1150-1500AD).

"Said" (pronounced sed) was previously "saith" and came about from "sai", a previous version of "say". Both "say" and "said" ultimately come from the Old English "secgan". "Plaid" (pronounced plad) comes from the Scottish Gaelic "plaide" meaning "a blanket or mantle". Its etymology is uncertain but its possible that it comes from "peallaid" meaning "sheepskin".

"Plague" (pronounced playg) comes from the Latin "plaga" meaning "wound". The modern spelling began to appear in the 15th century, borrowed from French. "Ague" (pronounced ayg-yoo) comes directly into English from the Old French word meaning "acute fever" from the Latin "acuta".

"Steak" (pronounced stake) probably comes from the Old Norse "steik" meaning "roast meat". "Streak" (pronounced streek) comes from the Old English "strica" meaning "stroke of a pen".

The "ough" word ending is highly varied in its pronunciation. The poem lists six words with different ways of sounding the ending - tho, throo, plow, coff, hock and tuff. "Plough" comes from the Old English "ploh" and was spelled differently whether it was a noun (plough) or a verb (plow). Over time the verb changed to the noun's spelling, although the original verb spelling remains in American English. "Tough" comes from the Old English "toh" meaning "strong and firm in texture". The "ough" ending of both words was originally pronounced with a "och" ending like the Scottish "loch".

"Cup" finally ends "The Chaos" with a rhyming couplet that both looks and sounds alike. Not to be outdone however, add "-board" to its end and the "p" falls silent. "Cup" comes from the Latin "cuppa" meaning "tub".