aitch

• haitch (dialectal or nonstandard)
• ache (rare)

From Middle English ache, borrowed from Old French ache, from Vulgar Latin *acca. (Compare Italian acca.) The source is unclear, but may descend from the vowelless alphabetic sequence ha ka 'H, K' (becoming [aka] when the [h] ceased to be pronounced), as K had low frequency in Late Latin.^[1] Doublet of ecchi.

• enPR: āch, IPA^(key): /ˈeɪt͡ʃ/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪtʃ

aitch (plural aitches)

1. The name of the Latin-script letter H/h.
   • 1773 October, The Monthly Review Or Literary Journal Enlarged:

     The word length, which contains only four sounds l e ng th, is usually spell'd thus, el ee en gee tee aitch.

   • 1898, H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, London: William Heinemann, page 257:

     "If you've got any drawing-room manners, or a dislike to eating peas with a knife or dropping aitches, you'd better chuck 'em away. They ain't no further use."

   • 1959, Anthony Burgess, Beds in the East (The Malayan Trilogy), published 1972, page 469:

     She frowned, hearing Lim Cheng Po's voice, so English, so refined, so very English upper-class. And often she had had to tell Joe about his aitches.

   The word hour is written with a silent aitch.

   Cockneys drop their aitches.

• Often used in reference of H-dropping.

• aitchbone
• aitchless
• aitch-dropping

• → Arabic: إِتْش (ʔitš)
• → Greek: έιτς (éits)
• → Japanese: エイチ (eichi), dated エッチ (etchi)
• → Korean: 에이치 (eichi)
• → Malay: hec
• → Persian: اِچ (eč, “English letter H”), اِیچ (eyč, “English letter H”)
• → Russian: эйч (ejč, “English letter H”)
• → Tagalog: eyts
• → Thai: เอช (éech), เฮช (héech)

• (Latin-script letter names) letter; a, bee, cee, dee, e, ef, gee, aitch, i, jay, kay, el, em, en, o, pee, cue, ar, ess, tee, u, vee, double-u, ex, wye, zee / zed

• Cathi, Chait, Chita, chati, tachi, tachi-

• itch

Orthographically from English aitch, but phonetically a regular reflex of Middle English ache, from Old French ache, from Vulgar Latin *acca, probably an extension of earlier ha, from an unindentified source.

• IPA^(key): /etʃ/

aitch (plural aitches)

1. The name of the Latin-script letter H/h.

• https://dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/h