English is full of words that don”t sound like they look. Thought could be written with just 4 letters (three if we still used þ), we replace the first l in colonel with an r, and we don’t pronounce the th in asthma.
Victuals is another one of those words.
The first time you see this word—if you’ve never heard it spoken—it’s easy to think it’s pronounced like vik-chew-alls. Except it’s not.
Victuals is actually pronounced the same as its synonym vittles. Both words are pronounced the same and mean the same thing: food.
Victuals has been around for centuries, having first emerged some time in the 15th century. It’s easy to think that vittles is a recent phonetic spelling of victuals, but interestingly enough, vittles was already about a century old by the time victuals emerged.
The word vittle evolved from the Middle English vitaille, which was previously the Middle French word vitaille. Victual had a similar etymological history, except for some reason had been influenced by the late Latin victualia.
And since both words referred to the same thing and vittle was older, the pronunciation of victual stuck, even though it’s spelling changed.
