Consider the word doubt. Before the sixteenth century, it showed up variously as doute, dout, and dute. It comes to us from the French doute, and the French got it from the Latin dubitare (pronounced doo-bee-TAH-ray, with every letter voiced), the root shared with dubious and indubitably. During the Renaissance, as scholars looked with renewed interest to the classical world, they decided to trace doute back to its original Latin dubitare and restore the B to its “rightful” place in the word.
