Legal Writing

Words Ending in -gue

By Maeve

An email in which the word colleague was spelled “colleag” got me thinking about English words that end with a hard g sound spelled -gue.

Since only a few such words are in common use, learning to spell them shouldn’t be too difficult.

WARNING: These words start to look strange when you look at them in a group.

Twenty-six common English words end with the spelling -gue.

Variant spellings drop the -ue.

The following -gue words have no acceptable variant spellings, not even in Merriam-Webster:

brogue
colleague
fatigue
fugue
harangue
ideologue
intrigue
league
meringue
morgue
plague
rogue
tongue
vague
vogue

For each of the following -gue words, Merriam-Webster recognizes variant spellings without the -ue:

analogue
catalogue
travelogue
decalogue
demagogue
epilogue
monologue ?
pedagogue ?
prologue

The OED, on the other hand, does not dignify decalog, demagog, travelog, epilog, or monolog with entries. It acknowledges the existence of pedagog, catalog, and synagog. Pedagog and catalog are listed among obsolete spellings. Travelogue has an entry at which it is identified as “originally U.S,” but no variant spelling is given. Synagog is shown at synagogue and labelled U.S.

The OED does have an entry for prolog, but it has nothing to do with the word prologue:

prolog: (The name of) a high-level logic programming language derived from Lisp, originally designed for natural language processing but now used in many artificial intelligence programs.

I can write analog, catalog, and travelog without a shudder.

I cannot bring myself to write epilog, decalog, or synagog.

?

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Words Ending in -gue

Full post as published by Daily Writing Tips on May 21, 2009 (boomark / email).