in reply to My favorite silent English letter is:

Maybe other British English speakers will disagree with me, but I would never drop the "o" at the beginnging of "opossum" but then it isn't a word I use very much either.
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Re^2: My favorite silent English letter is:
by runrig (Abbot) on Mar 01, 2012 at 18:02 UTC
    The "o" completely disappears in the phrase "play possum" :-)
[reply]
      But there is no silent O in "possum" though it is possible there might be a missing one, if you consider possum=opossum. It is quite common for words to lose letters over time, like how the Latin "fenestra" became the French "fenêtre". Can you tell I do tech support for a dictionary?
[reply]
        See my note elsewhere in this thread.
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Re^2: My favorite silent English letter is:
by LanX (Saint) on Mar 01, 2012 at 18:08 UTC
    checking WP reveals that opossums and possums belong to different families.

    So probably it's a false example.

    Cheers Rolf

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