Nuts and Bolts: what the phth!

I came across some monophthongs the other day (they're vowel sounds which stay the same all the way through, without swerving about at all. Just ordinary ones, in fact), and it got me thinking about that phth group of letters.

As a matter of fact monophthong comes from the Greek word monophthongos, from monos which means one, and thongos, sound.

(Well, if you think saying phth (which would sound like fth, though not, of course, like the fth in the English word fifth) is hard, try saying sth.)

Where else do we find the sound phth? Well, there's the group of words connected with the organic compounds phthalein, which gives us some lovely blue and green dyes. The phth group appears here because the word is a shortened form of naphthalene. 

There 's phthalate, too, which is a related chemical used to make PVC.

Phthiriasis is a respectable way of saying someone is lousy - that is, literally infected with lice. That word comes from the Greek phtheir, louse.

Phthisis is a condition which involves wasting away, from Greek phthisikos.

In all these words you pronounce the initial phth sound, rather disappointingly, f; though there is the option, with phthisis, of saying it t or fth.

Then we have aphthous, a small ulcer in the mouth or stomach; apophthegm, a short saying; ophthalmic (you'll have come across that one); xerophthalmic, a dryness of the eye; and terephthalate (the T part of PET plastics).

All phth words are of Greek origin (the Greeks had just one letter to represent our th sound. They had just one letter to represent our f sound, too, though in English words that used to be Greek we tend to write it ph, which is silly of us).

All these phth words look rather bizarre and puzzling; but hey, variety is the spice of life, isn't it.

Word To Use Today: one with a phth in it. The Greek word naphthalene comes from Greek, of course, but before that from the Persian neft.