AAAmerican Accent US
Illustration: the history of the word know
ksilentnow
A sound people stopped saying

Why does know start with a silent K?

Know comes from Old English cnāwan, pronounced with a K. It shares an ancient root with Latin cognoscere and Greek gnosis. Here is how the K went silent.

Then · Old English

cnāwan

said like k-NAH-wan

1600s↓

Now · American English

know/noʊ/

said NOH

The story

Know comes from Old English cnāwan, "to know, perceive, recognize". The root is very old and widely shared: Latin (co)gnōscere (the source of recognize and cognition) and Greek gnōsis, "knowledge", come from the same ancestor. Notice the pattern — a G or K sound before the N in all of them.

English kept that K for centuries. Old and Middle English speakers said it, and so a word like knowledge began with a real "k-n". In the 1600s, educated speech simplified the kn- cluster to plain N, the same change that silenced knee, knife and knight.

The spelling had been fixed long before, so the K stayed. It still earns its keep in one way: it separates know from no, and knew from new — pairs that sound identical but are spelled differently.

How the word changed

  1. 1

    Old English (before 1100)

    cnāwan

    "To know, perceive." K pronounced.

  2. 2

    Middle English (1100-1500)

    knowen

    Still said with K.

  3. 3

    1600s

    know

    kn- simplifies to n-.

  4. 4

    Modern English

    know

    Homophone of no; knew is a homophone of new.

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Questions people ask

+Why is the K silent in know?

English speakers stopped pronouncing the kn- cluster in the 1600s. The K is a fossil from Old English cnāwan, where it was said.

+Are know and the Greek word gnosis related?

Yes. Know, Latin cognoscere and Greek gnōsis all come from the same ancient root meaning "to know".

+How do you pronounce knowledge?

NAH-lij, /ˈnɑlɪdʒ/ in American English — silent K, and a different vowel from know.

More words with a story

kneeNEE

Knee was pronounced "k-NAY-oh" in Old English, K and all. German Knie still says the K. Here is when English dropped it and why the spelling stayed.

knightNITE

Knight was once pronounced with a K and a throaty GH, something like "k-NIKHT". Here is how both sounds disappeared and the spelling stayed.

knifeNIFE

Knife came into late Old English as cnīf, probably from the Vikings' Old Norse knífr, and the K was pronounced. Here is how it went silent.

writeRITE

Write comes from Old English wrītan, once said with a real W. Writing first meant scratching runes into wood. Here is how the W went silent.

Part of

Why does know start with a silent K?