This is part of the difference between series.
Recently, a friend asked on Facebook why fiery is spelled fiery instead of firey. As I was researching the questions, I found the answer fascinating and thought my readers might be interested in knowing, too.
To understand the difference, we must travel back in time. Way back. I mean, waaaaay back. Back to more than 1,000 years ago.
During the early Middle Ages, people in England and parts of Scotland spoke Old English, which is a distant predecessor of today’s English. The English language has changed a lot during those several centuries. In fact, if today’s English speakers travelled to the Middle Ages, they would have a difficult time understanding Old English.
Take the following example of a sentence written in Old English:
- Iċ ēode þurh þæt fȳr and ne barn.
Any idea what it says? Anyone? Well, here it is in modern English:
- I walked through the fire and did not burn.
Didn’t expect that, did you? And even having the two languages side by side, there are very few similarities. And is the only word that stayed the same, and fire and burn are sort of similar to their predecessors.
And that’s where our answer really begins.
Fȳr
Today’s fire descends from the Old English spelling of fȳr. Old English was spoken for roughly 700 years, the period between the 5th and 11th centuries. It’s hard to pinpoint when fȳr first emerged and when it eventually disappeared, but we can be confident that it happened during that period.
Fier
As Old English transitioned into Middle English, starting after the Normans conquered England in 1066, words like fȳr began to slowly change.
One feature of Middle English is what’s called the Great Vowel Shift. Over a 250-year period beginning in the mid-14th century, English speakers slowly changed how they pronounced their long vowels. As a result, spellings changed, too.
During the transition, fȳr actually took on multiple spellings, with multiple vowel combinations replacing the ȳ in fȳr, including the following:
- fīr
- ir
- fer
- ver
- feir
- veir
- fur
- fuir
- vur
- feur
- feor
- foir
And of course fier. Eventually, the other spellings became less popular. It would be over 400 years after the Norman conquest before meaningful efforts to standardize spelling emerged. As a result, spelling variants persisted sometimes for centuries. Frankly, the standard English spelling we are familiar with today is a relatively recent phenomenon, with spelling variants occurring regularly even into the mid-19th century.
Despite the pervasiveness of spelling variance, fier slowly emerged as the most popular spelling.
Fire
Fire was another one of those variant spellings. In fact, it has been around since roughly the year 1200, but it took over 400 years until it displaced fier as the most popular spelling.
Somewhere along the way of fier holding on to its popularity and fire taking over the throne, fiery emerged as the adjective form of what is today fire. And for some reason, it stuck. Possibly because when we pronounce fire, it seems as though it‘s just one syllable; whereas fiery seems to have three. Maybe the current spelling helps maintain that three-syllable pronunciation.
Are you curious about other English oddities? Ask me in the comments below, and I’ll see what I can find out.