I'm a young folk, and you can think of me as your friendly guide to the English language.

We talk about writing, history, rules, and cool stuff.

Today, in honor of it being Halloween Month, we're going to talk about why we pronounce

the E.D. the way we do in the word wicked and others like it.

And about devil legs.

Why do we pronounce the E.D. the way we do at the end of the word wicked?

Listen to this passage.

I stood naked on the rugged, jagged precipice and faced my accursed, aged foe with dog

it resolve.

The wretched, wicked wizard stretched a crooked finger from a ragged sleeve as he began

to mutter the incantation I thought of my beloved hilt a guard.

How's that to set you on the edge of your seat?

Aside from the gripping drama and suspense, what did you notice?

Maybe you noticed that it had way too many adjectives.

True enough, but there's more.

Every one of those adjectives, naked, rugged, jagged, accursed, aged, dogged, wretched,

crooked, ragged, and beloved, has the same unusual pronunciation of the suffix E.D.

If these words were pronounced like most English words ending in E.D., they'd be pronounced

naked, rugged, jagged, accursed, aged, dogged, wretched, wicked, croaked, ragged, and

beloved.

That's because usually the E.D. suffix is just pronounced as a D or T at the end of the

last syllable of the word it gets suffixed to.

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