
Expresso? The x spelling has considerable historical precedent (2014) - edward
http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2014/08/18/espresso_or_expresso_the_x_spelling_actually_has_considerable_historical.html
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vilhelm_s
I guess even if "espresso means not just ‘fast’ but ‘pressed out’", spelling
it with an x still would be kind of natural in English. After all, "to
express" (from Middle English expresse < Old French espresser, according to
OED) can also mean "to press, squeeze, or wring out".

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schoen
You can also trace it back to Latin exprimo, exprimere, exprimi, expressus,
which is why the linked article says that Italian (and implicitly also French)
"corrupted the Latin root". (The Romance languages lost the /k/ in the
consonant cluster in /ekspr/ → /espr/.)

The complicated part is that even though we _do_ have roots that preserve the
x spelling and the /k/ pronunciation -- "express" and "expression" \-- we
don't have the Italian "-esso" (or Latin "-essus") ending, so when we use the
"-esso" it seems we must be borrowing an Italian word, which it would probably
be most natural to borrow with the Italian spelling and pronunciation, unless
we want to say "a pressed coffee" or "a pressed-out coffee".

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Oletros
> (The Romance languages lost the /k/ in the consonant cluster in /ekspr/ →
> /espr/.)

One of the Romance languages that didn't lost it is Spanish, expresar is
pronunced /ekspresar/

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schoen
Oh yeah, thanks for that counterexample!

Portuguese has lost it in pronunciation but not spelling (unstressed ex →
/iʃ/).

(But I should be careful generalizing about some of these things because
sometimes you have later scholarly borrowings from Latin, so you can have some
words with the modified original root and then some words with the re-borrowed
root, maybe with a different pronunciation.)

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learnstats2
Essentially:

The x spelling is correct in French. At least some of the article's evidence
for the 'x' spelling appears to have arrived in English through French rather
than the original Italian.

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azinman2
I didn't understand this point (and I agree with Weird Al). Isn't it simply
"café?"

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contingencies
Someone pulled me up on this here in China the other day. Knowing no better I
accepted correction. I wish I'd had this article then, which essentially
confirms _espresso_ is exclusively a modern Italian form and nothing more.

