In its modern pronunciation, the "gh" has been softened to an "f" sound, so it rhymes with other words this has happened to, like cough. The word originally had stress on the second syllable ...

Hockett reasoned that softer, processed foods would lead to changes in the arrangement of the human bite, making the pronunciation of these sounds possible. This would explain why many hunter ...

More than 30 years ago, the linguist Charles Hockett noted that speech sounds called labiodentals, such as “f” and “v”, were more common in the languages of societies that ate softer foods.