_Celtic Etymology_ (Vol. ix., p. 40.).--If the _h_ must be "exhasperated"
(as Matthews used to say) in words adopted into the English language, how
does it happen that we never hear it in _hour_, _honour_, _heir_, _honest_,
and _humour_? Will E. C. H. be so kind as to inform me on this point? With
regard to the word _humble_, in support of the _h_ being silent, I have
seen it stated in a dictionary, but by whom I cannot call to mind, in a
list of words nearly spelled alike, and whose sound is the same:
"HUMBLE, low, submissive."
"UMBLES, the entrails of a deer."
Hence the point of the sarcasm "He will be made to eat _humble_ pie;" and
it serves in this instance to show that the _h_ is silent when the word is
properly pronounced.
The two words _isiol_ and _irisiol_, properly _uirisiol_, which E. C. H.
has stated to be the original Celtic words signifying _humble_, have quite
a different meaning: for _isiol_ is quietly, silently, without noise; and
_uirisiol_ means, sneaking, cringing, crawling, terms which could not be
applied without injustice to a really humble honest person. The
Iberno-Phoenician _umal_ bears in itself evidence that it is not borrowed
from any other language, for the two syllables are intelligible apart from
each other; and the word can be at once reduced to its root _um_, to which
the Sanscrit word _kshama_, as given by E. C. H., bears no resemblance
whatever.