Crazy English: ghoti
Ghoti is a constructed word intended to illustrate some of the craziness in English punctuation, in that, taking the sounds of its parts from different places, it could be said as fish.
Said as: fish
Written as: ghoti
derived from: enouGH, wOmen, naTIon
In my book -ough, in particular, is the craziest as in enough, thorough, bough, through, although - all pronounced totally differently.
I’d heard it credited to George Bernard Shaw but, apparently, his biography credits it to an ‘anonymous spelling reformer’.
Published