The word “knight” came from the word “cniht” meaning “boy” or “servant”. Its signification was eventually strengthened to what we now think of as a “knight”.
How did we get from the pronunciation of “cniht” to “knight”. Well, the earliest pronunciation was probably (using the IPA):
- [knixt]
Then, the voiceless velar fricative [x] became the voiceless palatal fricative [ç] through contact with the front vowel [i]. So, now it’s:
- [kniçt]
After that, the [k] sound at the beginning of the word was dropped, giving us:
- [niçt]
Then, the [ç] sound was dropped, but the previous vowel underwent compensatory lengthening:
- [ni:t]
Then, the Great Vowel Shift happened. A lot of vowels moved their pronunciation around the vowel space, but the important change we’ll focus on is [i:] to [aj] (there was also a companion change of [u:] to [aw]). So, instead of [ni:t], we have:
- [najt]
Oh, and a quick note, from “cniht” to “knight” there were a few spelling reforms. “Cn” at the beginning of a word became “Kn” and “h” denoting [x] or [ç] was written as “gh” instead!
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