Ghyll talk:Exingians

Nope - he meant "potsherds". See http://www.answers.com/potsherds. --Morbus Iff 21:18, 18 Jun 2005 (EDT)

Huh, I never would have guessed. I bet that originally was a typo, and then those crazy archaeologists liked it and kept using it - like the word "Filk". --Dfaran L'Eniarc 00:45, 19 Jun 2005 (EDT)

In fact it's the other way around: "sherd" is the older form, though less popular today; it's related to "shear". See [1] for full details. English underwent a partial sound-change that changed "er" to "ar" in the 17th century; this affected the name of the letter R and the words "varsity" (from "university"), "parson" (which used to be just a different meaning of "person"), "sergeant" (which kept its spelling with "er"), and "shard" among others. However, in the great majority of words with "er" the sound-change reversed itself; we no longer say or write "marcy" for "mercy", for example. --John Cowan 14:13, 20 Jun 2005 (EDT)