Horsetails, clubmosses and spikemosses
lycopodium
say ly-koh-POH-dee-um
Lycopodium clavatum
The clubmosses, creeping over acid ground on wiry stems. The name has been through Greek and Latin before reaching English, and each language left a letter behind that does not sound like itself.
What it is
The plant
Lycopodium clavatum is stag's-horn clubmoss, a long trailing stem clothed in small stiff leaves, rooting as it goes across heath and moorland. The spore cones stand up on forked stalks, which is what clavatum, club-shaped, refers to. The spores themselves are a fine dry yellow powder that repels water and burns in a flash when thrown into a flame, and they were used for stage lightning and for dusting fingerprints.
Why
Why the letters and the sound disagree
Greek lykos, a wolf, and pous, a foot, in its stem form pod-. Wolf's foot, for the shaggy branch tips. Both halves came into English through Latin and both were respelled on the way: the Greek kappa became a c that has to be read as k, and the Greek upsilon became a y that has to be read as an English long i. Two letters, two conversions, neither of them audible.
Recorded
Spellings people arrive at
- lycopodumthe endingYes: lycopodium.
- licopodeumtwo changes at onceThe first. lycopodium starts ly.
- licopodiumy doing the work of iThe first vowel is y.
- lykopodumtwo changes at oncelycopodium.
- lycop odiumheard as two wordsOne word, and the break is in the wrong place: lycopodium.
- lykopodeumtwo changes at onceThe spelling is lycopodium.
- licopodumtwo changes at oncelycopodium.
- likopodiumtwo changes at oncelycopodium.
- leecopodiumtwo changes at onceThat syllable is written ly.
- lykopodiumhard cThe sound is k. The letter is c, because the word came through Latin.
Back