Timeline for Why does "inferred" have two Rs while "inference" doesn't?
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4 events
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| Jun 2, 2019 at 10:54 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | This is not correct, I’m afraid. The fact that the Latin infinitive happens to have two r’s is incidental – the stem itself has only one r, and that is what’s relevant for the English verb. Infer itself happens to be fairly late, from the 16th c., but others like transfer and refer are from the 1300s, taken from French where they only have one r (transferer, referer). The French infinitive marker -er was dropped when borrowing verbs, and -fer was the result. The subsequent doubling of the r then follows the broad stress-based rule given in user58319’s answer. | |
| Oct 22, 2018 at 10:22 | vote | accept | Perfectly Cromulent | ||
| Jun 5, 2019 at 19:25 | |||||
| Oct 19, 2018 at 15:51 | history | edited | Jesse Williams | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Oct 19, 2018 at 14:23 | history | answered | Jesse Williams | CC BY-SA 4.0 |