CHAPTER 49

Using et and ette

The French influence on the English language is still very strong. It shows itself not only in the roots of

many of our words but also in present-day pronunciation and spelling. French spellings often lead to
problems.
With the suffixes et and ette, the problem is when do we pronounce the t and when do we pronounce et
as ay? We must wonder what the rules are when we pronounce the t in billet and ballot but not in ballet.
Similarly, we pronounce the t in banquet but not in bouquet.
Traditionally, the et ending is pronounced ay as in ballet, croquet, and crochet, and the ette ending is
pronounced et, as in cassette and gazette. There are over three hundred English words that end in et and
all, except about twenty, are pronounced et. Many of these words are of French origin.

(^) The following are some of the words that retain the ay sound.
(^) As for the ette ending, there are fewer than two dozen commonly used English words that are still
spelled that way. A number of these are in the process of changing to the simple et ending.
(^) Clearly, the English language has enthusiastically adopted the diminutive suffix ette, but just as clearly
the shorter et is preferred over the cumbersome ette, no matter how it was used in the original French.
Following the healthy tradition of adopt and adapt, it has now been anglicized.
There are times when the French spelling and/or pronunciation must be retained in order to
differentiate between homophones. When the t is pronounced in fillet, it has a number of meanings in
woodwork, dressmaking, and metal work. When the ending is pronounced ay, it usually refers to meat or
fish, but even this difference is slowly disappearing. The word pallet likewise has numerous meanings
ranging from a straw bed to a wooden support for freight. The paint board used by an artist, however, is
spelled palette. The words kitchenette and dinette are purely 20th-century American inventions.