On Fri, 20 Feb 2004, David Goldfarb wrote: #And "weird", "sheik", "foreign", "height", "leisure". weird Just answered in another post. sheik >From Arabic; the OED gives the primary pronunciation as rhyming with "cake". Maybe Americans found it confusing with "shake". [Arabic shaikh properly 'old man', f. shakha [first 'a' long-] to grow or be old. Cf. OF. esceque, seic, F. cheik, scheik, Sp. jeque, Pg. xeque.] foreign Should've been "foran" or "forane", from Latin "foranus", but some overeducated jackass got it into his head that it was connected with "reign" < L. "regnum". Same for "sovereign" < It. "sovrano". height In a previous post. leisure It looks as if we took the word from French. I admit, most of the explanations I've given for exceptions are no help to the speller. English spelling is a mess. -- Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoepist, and Philological Busybody a.k.a. Mark A. Mandel