Translations:Wiktionnaire:Actualités/037-avril-2018/32/en

Fun fact

A fun fact of the French language this time. Years of existence were required to the Wiktionary to at last find words with several ligatures: œ or æ or both. This is due to the fact that these characters are rather rare in French, so having them twice in one word imposes particular conditions. And indeed all the words containing two o, ethel, or « œ », are words built by the merge of two words, identical or different, already containing the aforementionned character. The list is short and here it is: sœur de cœur, cœur de bœuf, œil de bœuf / œil-de-bœuf and nœud-nœud. But this is not how it happenned for the only word found with two a, ash or « æ ». This word is Ææa and comes from Greek. It comes from Αἰαία, another name for the Circé island. « æ » replaces αί. Identical in English, this graph with two ligatures is an archaism from a long time ago. Nowadays in French, and also since 1775 in the Dictionnaire abrégé de la Fable by Chompré, it is rather written Éa. Easy and short, but English-speakers preferred Aeaea.

Amongst these quirks, the worst of them, the word Œniadæ [e.nja.de]. It is the only known French word with both ligatures. This is strange, and due to the fact that the latin word was not Frenchified, which would have given « Œniades ». Yes, sometimes the process does not go all the way… Still I hope this fun fact will have made you want to search for archaisms in your language and, who knows, maybe prove that exceptions are not really unique… — by Lyokoï