Words that start with silent letters?

gnu.

Pneumonia
Pseudonym
Psychiatrist
Psychedelic
Pneumatic
Psyche

I could go on and on with silent P words.

know
knight
gnaw

Which “l” is silent in “llama”?
tsar

Also, this might help.

Knife, knee, pneumonia, mnemonic

aisle

@Marina Does that count as silent?

Well, why not? It is pronounced the same way as isle.

@Marina That said phoenix when I answered. Are you playing mind games with me? ; )

@Snarp You caught me. I thought I had edited it fast enough. I rethought my answer.

Bit of a cheat here, Tchaikovsky. A classic thankfully he wasn’t silent.

Knuckle
Knitting
Knave
Knight
Psychology
Psychiatrist
Psalm
Psoriasis

Btoaster
Brefrigerator
Bstove
Bscissors
I could go on…

I am sorry. I was just mad that i couldn’t think of any.

@stump You forgot Brose.
As in:
“What happened to your nose?”
“I was sniffing a brose.”
“There’s no ‘b’ in rose…”
“There was in this one!”

Cue rimshot. Laugh. Etc.

@mrentropy Very good!

Phallus.

@erichw1504 Not silent, is it? Anymore than Church or This. Takes two letters to make the sound.

@6rant6 It has a silent “F”.

Knead, knob, know, knack

Knockers.

@erichw1504 An invisible “F” maybe, but not silent.

It’s not a “silent F”. The PH makes that sound.. If it was a silent F, it would be Fphallus.

@Sarcasm & @Snarp You know what?! I’m sick of your snarpy and sarcastic responses. ~

@erichw1504 LOL

cnidarian—an animal belonging to a particular phylum of invertebrates

Whenever my Dad would help me with spelling he’d say: “The (x) is silent, like the P in swimming!”

Tyoldernod.

Totally made that up.

@stratman37 Ok, I’ll bite. There’s no “P” in swimming.

@Snarp Exactly, it’s silent!

Both wrong. Some kids DO pee when they’re swimming, but you can’t hear it!

My office mate is trying to come up with a silent phenetic alphabet; we’re currently missing B, F, I, L, N, O, Q, R, S, U, V, W, Y, and Z

Ptolemy. I also knew a guy named Rick, spelled with a silent “P”.

To the words have to BEGIN with the silent letter? Otherwise B is easy—words like dumb, numb, tomb, womb, etc.

Almost anything that begins with “kn,” “pn,” or “ps.”

I also do not hear the “h” when I say honor.

@stratman37 That reminds me of the classic sign: “Welcome to our ool. Notice there’s no “p” in it. Please keep it that way.”

@Supacase Honor, good one!

write
wright
wrong
wrest
wrestle
and all the other wr words

gnome, gneiss, pterodactyl, psyllium, heir, czar

Xylophone doesn’t even start with the right letter but I guess that doesn’t fit here.

Aardvark.

How about a word that starts with two silent letters? Definitely one of the odder words in the language. I believe it derives from the work naphthalene, itself a bit unusual.

phthalate

Notice that it starts with four consonants. I don’t know of any other such word.

@LostInParadise There’s chthonic, derived from Greek, also pronounced w/ first 2 letters silent—the first sound is th (a digraph) like in phthalate.

@gasman, Thanks for the info.

Histoire

@mattbrowne C’est francais, n’est ce pas?

@Marina – Mais oui !