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Not only is hiccough old, it's also new... at least compared to hiccup. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hiccough https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hiccough > Hicc
by Karellen 3y ago
Not only is hiccough old, it's also new... at least compared to hiccup.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hiccough https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hiccough
> Hiccough is a later spelling, and an example of folk etymology.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hiccup#English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hiccup#English
> Alternative forms
> hiccough (old-fashioned, hypercorrection)
...and see the etymology for more info.
- stephen_g 3y agoInteresting, I’ve never seen that word spelt as ‘hiccough’ (native English speaker here). Do some people really claim that fake spelling is the correct one?
- eesmith 3y agoNgrams shows "hiccough" was 5-6x more common than "hiccup" between the 1860s and 1920s. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=hiccough%2Chiccup&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=hiccough%2Chic... . An archive.org search found plenty of texts from that era using hiccough, though often with some hiccups as well. This one from 1886 is interesting: https://archive.org/details/b21699331/page/n1/mode/2up?q=hiccough+hiccup https://archive.org/details/b21699331/page/n1/mode/2up?q=hic... > No doubt many of my professional brethren are well acquainted with the Hippocratic aphorism <Greek transcription omitted> "Sneezing occurring after hiccough removes the hiccough,” or, as it is rendered by Adams, “Sneezing coming on, in the case of a person afflicted with hiccup, removes the hiccup.” The 1886 author uses hiccough while quoting the older Adams reference, from 1849, as using hiccup (primary reference for Adams is at https://archive.org/details/genuineworksofhi02hippuoft/page/754/mode/2up?q=hiccup https://archive.org/details/genuineworksofhi02hippuoft/page/... )