Why don't we pronounce the "p" in the word "receipt"? Why is the "p" there when we don't pronounce it?

@BijouPleasurette 😆perhaps the whole thing is just taking the p lol

I googled it:

re·ceipt
/rəˈsēt/
Origin
late Middle English: from Anglo-Norman French receite, from medieval Latin recepta ‘received’, feminine past participle of Latin recipere . [b]The -p- was inserted in imitation of the Latin spelling.[/b]
And there you have it, if you can believe google. lol

https://youtu.be/Hib1SHQ0ioU?si=SgQt6j2fi60pjlwA

It still is pronounced in Norwegian. There it is [i]resept[/i] and is pronounced just as an English speaker would sound out the word. But it doesn't have the current English meaning, instead it means [i]prescription[/i] (for medicine) or [i]recipe[/i] just as [i]receipt [/i]used to in English. According to https://ordbokene.no/bm,nn/search?q=resept&scope=ei it comes from the Latin recipere just as the English ultimately does. English got it via French though so the p haf already been lost by the time it came into English, it was restored later.

If you start changing the spelling every time the pronunciation shifts English would end up like Dutch or Norwegian where books from only a century ago are very difficult to read even for native speakers, yet we can easily read Dickens from the middle of the 19th century and Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding from 1689. Even Shakespeare needs only a little more effort despite being from more than 400 years ago.

It makes some sense because [i]receipt[/i] goes with [i]reception[/i]. Looked at this way it is words like [i]deceit[/i] and [i]deception [/i]that are the odd ones out with deceit having lost its p.

It's there for padding - if the 'p' wasn't there the "t" would rub against the "i" and wear it out

Hey, I blame the creator of the English language for that. It is a good question and if I had a Doctorate in the English language then I could possibly answer your question.

That would have made spelling test so much easier to pass when in school it it was written logically.

Receipt should be recipee in my spelling book from grade school. LOL

I've no idea. Perhaps a "typo" that stuck because someone was too lazy to change it.🙂

We do in recipe. Both just refer to a piece of paper and have the same origin.