1710: czar and tsar Aug 20, 2019

The titles of 'kaiser', 'caesar', and 'czar' all mean 'emperor' in different languages, but 'czar' can also be spelt 'csar', 'tzar' or 'tsar'. The word in Russian is царь with ц representing the 'ts' (ь is the symbol for softening consonants). It is not uncommon for a single letter to represent this double-articulation; German orthography does this with Z and the Hebrew alphabet has צ as an equivalent, but the difference here in spelling from using the increasingly standard Ts/Tz for English words broadly, and was adopted later. Cs/Cz is older was introduced into English by a Slovenian, Sigismund von Herberstein, who used the convention used by many Slavic or other Eastern Europeans for writing that sound generally.

Previous
Previous

1711: sure and secure Aug 21, 2019

Next
Next

1709: Robert the Bruce Aug 19, 2019