How can it be that “laughter” and “daughter” not only don’t rhyme but don’t sound remotely alike? What about “tomb,” “bomb,” and “comb”? Meanwhile, “liar” and “choir,” which couldn’t look more different, do rhyme. How and why is the English language so messed up? And why haven’t we done anything about it?

Recommended Stories

Margaret Cavendish’s contradictory multitudes

The forgotten women writers of the Shakespearean era

An essayist who remembers