a consonantal digraph, normally represents initial hw in words of OE. origin, as in hwæt what, hwisprian to whisper. In words of other origin, its occurrence may be due to analogy resting on the supposed phonetic appropriateness of the ‘aspirate’ sound, as in whip, whisk; it sometimes varies with h or simple w; e.g., whortleberry and hurtleberry, whoop and hoop, whelked and welked. Historically OE. initial hw represents OTeut. χw (under which Indo-Eur. qw and kw were levelled), which appears as hw in the early forms of the Germanic languages, but is variously modified in their modern forms, appearing in High and Low German as w, in the Scandinavian languages, according to dialect, as hv, kv, and v, in English as wh. For typical forms see WHAT.
The normal OE. spelling hw was generally preserved in early ME. till late in the 13th century, e.g., in the Nero MS. of Ancren Riwle (with occas. variants in w, as wase whoso), and the pieces contained in An Old English Miscellany (E.E.T.S.); it persists in the Ayenbite of Inwyt in the form hu, as huich. The modern spelling wh is found first in regular use in the Ormulum, e.g., whillc which; it is the commoner spelling in the earlier text of Layamon’s Brut (with frequent variants in w), the Harl. MS. of King Horn, and the earliest MS. of Robert of Gloucester’s Chronicle, and continues thence without interruption to the present day; sporadic anticipations occur in the 11th century in the interlinear Rule of St. Benedict, as in æiwheþera (ed. E.E.T.S., p. 81), whænne (ib. 103), and in the 12th century in the Peterborough Chronicle (e.g., whilc, an. 675), and the Lambeth and Cotton Homilies. A few instances of the omission of h occur in some early texts (e.g., sinuurbul ‘teres’ in Epinal Gloss., wílum ‘nunc’ in 9th century Bede Glosses), and there are some in the 11th-century Rule of St. Benedict (e.g., wylce which, wanon whence); it becomes more frequent in the 12th century, chiefly in words of the interrogative class, e.g., wilc, ʓewilcum, wat, wænne, and (sum)wile, for hwilc, ʓewhilcum, hwæt, hwænne, and hwíle (Cato Glosses, Canterbury Psalter, Peterborough Chronicle, Homilies, etc.). Many examples of simple w are to be found in the two versions of Layamon and other 13th-century texts, and this variant spelling continues in widespread use till 1300.
Strong enunciation of the back (guttural) element in the pronunciation of (hw) is shown by the spellings chua, chuæt, chwæm, chuelc = hwá, etc., of the Lindisfarne Gosp., and began to be denoted in ME. of the 13th century by the use of qu (quu, qw), first in East Anglian texts (once in the Bestiary, qual whale; regularly but not exclusively in Genesis and Exodus). It remained a feature of East Anglian spelling till c. 1450 (as in the Paston Letters and the works of John Metham), but after 1300 it became more especially a characteristic feature of northern English, surviving in Scottish, esp. in the form quh, till the 18th century. (For the converse use of wh for qu (kw), see the letter Q.)
Early in the 15th century appear spellings with wh of words with initial h followed by an o-sound. It occurs first before ǭ (:—ā), e.g., whom for hǭm (OE. hám) in Brut c. 1420 (E. E. T. S.), pp. 346, 370, wholle for hǭle (OE. hál) in Chron. Vilod. c. 1420, 3368, and Camb. MS. of Guy of Warwick 3422, whote for hǭt (OE. hát) in Partonope, whore for hǭre hoar (OE. hår) in Revel. Monk of Evesham (1482); wholy for hǭly is used by Tindale, 1526. Later, other words normally spelt with initial ho- (of whatever origin) became subject to the same variation of spelling; e.g., whore for hǭre (OE. hóre), whole for hǭle (OE. hol), whood for hood (OE. hód), whoord for hǭrd ‘hoard’ (OE. hord). Some of these spellings were especially frequent in the 16th century; thus whood ‘hood’ is used by Hall the chronicler, Nashe, Harvey, John Davies of Hereford, and Sylvester. The wh-spelling has become standardized in two of these words, viz. whole and whore, and their derivatives, in which it became common c. 1600. The corresponding labialized pronunciation is current dialectally only in whole, but it survives in several other words where the standard form has preserved the original ho-, as in hoard, hold, hole, home, hot; in home, pronunciations such as (wom), (wuəm), (wvm) cover a wide area. For details of the evidence see the various words in this Dict. and Eng. Dial. Dict.
Spellings of HOW adv. with initial hw, wh, and (consequently) quh are on a different footing, as they are due in the first place to association of the word with the interrogative why, where, etc.
From the fourteenth century onwards there are sporadic instances of initial whr for wr, as whrightes (R. Brunne’s Chron. Wace 8711), whrassid ‘wrested’ (St. Cuthbert, 6041), whretchedly (Bale, 1560). For the relationship of hurlpool, hurlwind, hurtleberry to whirlpool, whirlwind, whortleberry, etc., and of thwack, thwang to whack, whang, etc., see these words.
Pronunciation. In OE. the pronunciation symbolized by hw was probably in the earliest periods a voiced bilabial consonant preceded by a breath. This was developed in two different directions: (1) it was reduced to a simple voiced consonant (w); (2) by the influence of the accompanying breath, the voiced (w) became unvoiced. The first of these pronunciations (w) probably became current first in southern ME. under the influence of French speakers, whence it spread northwards (but ME. orthography gives no reliable evidence on this point). It is now universal in English dialect speech except in the four northernmost counties and north Yorkshire, and is the prevailing pronunciation among educated speakers. The second pronunciation, denoted in this Dictionary by the conventional symbol (hw), and otherwise variously denoted by phoneticians, (wh), (w), (ẉ), (w), is general in Scotland, Ireland, and America, and is used by a large proportion of educated speakers in England, either from social or educational tradition, or from a preference for what is considered a careful or correct pronunciation.
The 15th or 16th century Welsh transcript of the English Hymn to the Virgin (E.D.S. Misc. 3, p. 27) shows the voiceless pronunciation, rendering where by hwier, and the evidence of the 16th century and later orthoepists goes to show that this was the prevailing pronunciation among cultured speakers, but there are indications that it was not of universal currency. Towards the end of the 18th century the voiceless was ousted by the voiced sound, and the lexicographer John Walker (1791), notes that in London speech ‘the aspirate h is often sunk,’ and includes the voiced pronunciation of wh among the four faults of the speech of the metropolis. The restoration of the voiceless pronunciation which took place in the 19th century was due in part to Scottish and Irish influence, and in part to conscious reference to the spelling. Some early orthoepists admitted a pronunciation of whole, wholesome with (hw). This must have been familiar to Samuel Johnson, for in the Grammar prefixed to his Dictionary he remarks that ‘in whore only, and sometimes in wholesome, wh is sounded like a simple h.’ The dialectal pron. (wōl, wul) are widespread.
In Sc. dialects north of the Tay the voiceless bilabial (hw) has become the voiceless labio-dental (f) in interrog. prons. and advs., as fa who, fat what, fan when; in Aberdeen and Banff in other words also, as fite white, folp whelp, fup whip. (Cf. FALL sb.3).
