Not the English, Sam, it's the bloody French again. After the Norman invasion of 1066, a lot of French words were imposed upon the poor downtrodden Old English, including words like receipt, receive and recipe, which all have the same root in French - it meant a list of things (ingredients, goods, etc). A lot of English's 'difficult' spellings come from those cheese-eating surrender monkeys. I'm not enirely sure about 'knife', but given the spelling it's probably rooted in Norse and the Viking invasions of Old Britain. The etymologies of English words are a fascinating insight into Britain's history of being invaded and occupied.
17 mths ago