Etymology

non-rhotic

Today it means: Of an accent, most often one of English: not pronouncing the written letter "r" after a vowel, as in Received Pronunciation, most other accents of England, the Boston accent, traditional NYC English, many accents of southern Louisiana, Australian English, etc. Full definition →

English rhotic ← Middle English non- ← Old English nān-
Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

  1. Proto-Indo-European*né
  2. Proto-Germanic*ne
  3. Proto-Indo-European*ís?
  4. Proto-Indo-European*h₁óynos
  5. Proto-Germanic*ainaz
  6. Proto-Germanic*nainaz
  7. Proto-West Germanic*nain
  8. Old Englishnān
  9. Middle Englishnon
  10. Old Englishnān
  11. Old Englishnān-
  12. Middle Englishnon-
  13. Englishnon-
  14. Englishrhotacismbf.
  15. Englishrhotic
  16. English todaynon-rhotic

From non- + rhotic.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.