Is the S or C silent in " Scent " ?
Oh, I’m so glad you asked. You know how my co-host is always writing those super complicated and convoluted math and physics posts? Well, now it’s MY turn! Lucky me! Lucky me. I’ll skip the boring opening and get right to the juicy words. This is my field of expertise. ‘SC’ is a phonogram. A phonogram is a letter (or combination thereof, as seen in this example) that represents a sound. An example of this is CK, which makes the sound 'k'. Phonograms are fickle little things, though, which results in S, which can either sound like -s- from 'sat' or -z- from 'has'. Screw phonograms. The word phonogram comes from the prefix Phono, meaning sound/voice, and the suffix Gram, meaning something written. If you don't know what a prefix or suffix is, basically put- a prefix is the start of a word, eg. Geo, psych, paleo, micro, or hyper, whereas the suffix is the end of a word, eg. Logy, let, ing or ine. Prefixes and suffixes all have specific meanings, and with this, we can analyze a word and tear it apart to its core. You just made the word your bitch, to put it eloquently. Pardon my language (Although this entire post is about language so I think you’re probably just much better off trying to get used to it).
Now that I've explained what a phonogram is, you know what we're dealing with- one of the most irritating phonograms I've come across in my day, right next to the fact that when you combine the letters a, b, g, l, n and o in the specific order 'Bologna', the end result ends up coming out sounding like 'Baloney', which makes the word both autological (meaning that it describes itself) and a major nuisance. The counterpart of an autological word is a heterological word, heterological being a word that does NOT describe itself, and is possibly autological because sometimes language just flips you the bird.SO. SC is a phonogram which makes an -S- sound. While you could conclude that this makes the 'c' in 'Scent' silent, it's much more fun to point out that the 'c' is, in fact, a soft c, and possibly not silent at all. I'm gonna go on rambling and tell you what a soft letter is. A soft letter is one said softly, such as when you say 'c' in a word as -s-, whereas a hard 'c' would be said in a word as -k-. Did I just nullify the letter c? Yes, yes I did. Through the power of convolution, I have just doubled, if not tripled the length of this post, and had I just kept my stupid mouth shut I could have ended it by saying that the 'c' was silent. Oh well. Remember how I said that the phonogram 'sc' makes a -s- sound? Well, it can also make a -sk- sound, as seen in the word 'scalding'. This all just adds to the confusion. The explanation for this comes down to the aforementioned soft/hard rule. The letter C can make a soft sound, but only when it comes immediately before the letters E, I or Y (see Scenic, Science or Scythe). Thus, without our E, I or Y, the C is left to make a hard C noise, which sounds like a K. The point of all this is to show that… well, I don't really have one. Moving on.
I have a theory as to why the letter C is present in the word Scent, and this theory is based on the magic that is the homophone. A homophone is a word that looks different yet is said the same: in this case, our homophones of Scent include sent, scent and cent. The counterpart to a homophone is a heteronym, which are words that look the same yet are said differently, see lead and lead, or read and read. While read and lead do not rhyme, lead, read and reed DO rhyme. Again, screw language.
I propose that the reasoning behind the C being present in Scent is based on the existence of homophones, and, in particular, assisting in differentiating homophones so that their meaning is clearer. The word 'Scent' derives from the Late Middle English and Old French 'Sentir', meaning to perceive or smell, and the Latin 'Sentire', which best I can tell means the same thing. How sent and cent came out of this is beyond my realm of reasoning and something I don't want to have to google at this hour and especially at this word count. All I know is that for whatever reason, the letter C just started appearing in English words sometime around the 17th century- ascent, science, conscience, and finally, scent.
So there you go. The C in scent isn't silent, nor is the S. The C serves to differentiate the appearance and thus meaning of sent, scent and cent.