Hello,
I am really interested in spelling and i have just studied the word ‘Demesne’ which means land attached to a manor and retained by the owner,posession of property or domain. I looked up the origin of the word but i cannot understand why we have an ‘s’ in the word when we do not pronounce it.Does anybody know the reason why and is there any spelling rule governing this? Does anybody know any similiar word?
Thank you,
krithika

Island, isle and aisle.

I think it has to do with French.  Lots of Latin words lost their s in evolving toward French, so you get stella (star), which became étoile, among others.

Now talk about colonel.  ;D

Brazilian dude