1042: colonel Oct 16, 2017

English has odd standards for its spelling to put it simply, but for some words it makes much less sense than others. Like one of the pronunciations for another military-position, 'lieutenant', 'colonel' may seem to be missing letters to represent the way it is spoken. It is, sort of, in part due to the same reason as many words: pronunciations change after the spelling was standardised, which is inevitable anyway. The word 'colonel' comes from a now obsolete French word, 'coronel' which later developed into the French 'colonel' but did not change this way in English, though 'coronel' also originated from words that did not have this 'r': via the Italian 'colonnello' meaning ‘column of soldiers’, ultimately from the Latin 'columna' for 'column'. Indeed, 'coronel' was also fairly usual until the mid 17th century, but that is not the spelling that dominated in the end.