Veterinarian and Veteran, Vetting a Surprising Word Family

Why aren’t words spelled like we say them?

My student wondered about our pronunciation of veterinary and its spelling that didn’t seem to fit. Without checking their etymology, would you have guessed the words in bold below are related? It was a surprise to me.

• Taking my dog to the veterinarian.
• A veteran of the military.
• Vetting someone for a job.

To answer the question about pronunciation, it helps to feel what we’re saying, feel what our mouth is doing as we say a word. In the US, we might say veder-uh-nary or vetruh-nary. See the difference.

In one example we’re saying /d/ and the other one is /t/, which are frequently confused because with both sounds, our tongue is tapping against the back of our upper front teeth. With one, our vocal cords vibrate and the other doesn’t.

Another challenge for sounding out the spelling is losing the pronunciation of the <e> before the <r> and then the <i> in the middle having its pronunciation reduced to a neutral vowel, not a clear vowel phoneme.

So this student was struggling to spell the word because he depended solely on the pronunciation. That works fine for a simple base like grab or stop. Beyond that, we need word families, morphology, etymology, and more phonological understanding.

Veterinarian Led Us to Veteran

What do veteran and veterinarian have in common? They both came from the Latin etymon, or root, *veteris, that carries the meaning of “old, experienced.”

When we have a question about a word’s spelling, we always look at Etymonline.com. In the entry for veterinarian, there’s a mention of the Latin word *veterinum, meaning “beast of burden.” Scholars aren’t sure how the sense of “old” and “domestic animals” are connected. Read more about it on Etymonline.com. If you’re looking at the entry, you’ll see a link to the entry for veteran. We checked it.

We remove the Latin suffix <-is> and that gives us the English bound base <veter>.

What’s a Bound Base?

A bound base isn’t a word by itself. It must have a suffix or a prefix joined to it to be a practical English word. Here are some other bound bases:

• <ject> as in reject, interject, project, subject, inject, etc.
• <sist> as in persist, insist, resist, desist, consist, etc.
• <mit> as in admit, permit, submit, remit, commit, etc.

Knowing about bound bases has made such a difference in helping my dyslexic students understand how English works. They can see the consistent base spelling within the word family (like the ones listed above) and make sense of them while reading and spelling.

Veteran and Veterinarian

Veterans are experienced soldiers of any age. Veterinarians are experienced in caring for animals, whether they’re young or old.

Seeing that the base of these two words is <veter> we can create word sums. My student and I used word sums to analyze these words into morphemes. It makes understanding and often pronouncing the word easier.

veteran –> veter + an We know <-an> is a suffix, the sense being “of; belonging to.” We see this suffix in words like musician –> music + i + an. The <i> before the suffix is a connecting vowel letter.

veterinarian –> veter + ine + ary + an There’s a little more to unpack in this one. Same bound base with an <-ine> suffix, followed by two more suffixes, <-ary> and <-an>. I wondered if there might have been a word in this word family which had a final <-ine> suffix.

There was one–veterine. It’s obsolete now. It was an adjective used in the 1600s to describe an animal that carried loads or pulled a carriage. (“Veterine, Adj.” Oxford English Dictionary.)

Why does the <-ary> suffix change from <y> to <i>?

A suffix ending in a single letter <y> is changed to <i> as we add additional suffixes regardless of whether they are suffixes that begin with a vowel or a consonant letter. We don’t toggle from <y> to <i> if the suffix begins with an <i> because in English we avoid <ii>.

Can you see how looking at the morphemes in a word sum helps students understand the spelling? They become familiar with an ever-growing list of bases and suffixes. Hurray for that because they’ll keep running into them throughout their reading and spelling life! It also strengthens their recognition of when and why to apply the suffixing rules.

Why Aren’t Words Spelled Like We Say Them?

We can see why the word is spelled <veterinary> and not *<vetrinary>. It might match our pronunciation to spell it that way, and this may surprise you, but the reason for a spelling is NOT firstly about matching potential letters to sounds. It’s not.

Spelling’s first purpose is to carry meaning. Spelling our target word using the bound base <veter> keeps the historical meaning tied to the spelling. The historical meaning is also known as the orthographic denotation. Orthographic = proper spelling. Denotation = specific meaning.

How Do you say it?

Within veterinary’s phonology, we have multiple sounds or phonemes that we recognize. You and I might not pronounce it exactly the same. Here’s my representation of my typical pronunciation: /vɛdərə nɛri/ (veduhruh nary). Maybe sometimes I say /vɛtrə nɛri/ (vet-ruh-nary).

With either pronunciation the <er> in the <veter> base is not clearly enunciated. Neither is the middle <i>. Notice the upside down <e> in those spots of the pronunciation. That’s the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) symbol for a reduced vowel, also known as schwa.

The stress is on the /vɛt/ or /vɛd/ first syllable. The <er> and <i> are unstressed so the vowel phonemes are reduced or zeroed.

This is another example of consistent spelling within a related group of words, a word family, regardless of the pronunciation. Spelling doesn’t change to match our pronunciation. The spelling is tied to a word’s history and meaning.

How about Vet and Vetting?

I’m taking her to the vet. My uncle is a vet.

Using the noun, “vet,” requires context since it can be a clip of either veteran or veterinarian.

Vet can also be a verb. I’ve only heard this used to mean you’re checking someone’s background and references to be sure they’re qualified, eligible, etc. Surprise! That usage of vet is an evolved meaning of the clip of veterinarian and it’s from the same Latin root!

Vetting originated as a verb meaning to submit an animal to veterinary care, to be checked over by a vet. You’ll see the connection to our modern use of the word when you consider that before a race horse or farm animal would be sold, the prospective buyer would want the animal “vetted” by a veterinarian, like a home inspection before you buy.

Another fun look at the spelling stories of English. Every word has a story!