3 Womb, tomb, comb: The “tricky m” letter combinations

Letter combinations of the letter "m" in English are weird. The most confusing part is that if a word ends with the letters mb, the b is never pronounced, and the same applies to -ed, -ing and other forms of such words, especially:

womb, tomb – “mb” may sound nice in Swahili, but not so much in English, so make sure to keep it silent. Also, people tend to pronounce the “o” here as in “lot”, but these are rare instances of words where a single “o” is pronounced as a long “oo”, like in “tool”.

numb – the “b” is silent even in number when it means “more numb” (but of course not in “number” referring to a set of digits). The verb forms like numbed and numbing follow the same logic.

comb – remember, the “m” already looks like a comb, so no “b” is needed. The same goes for other forms, such as combing.

bomb – after all the other words, it shouldn't surprise you that the “b” is silent. This word is perhaps even more confusing than the others because it also exists in most other languages but with the “b” pronounced. As always, the same pronunciation is used also for bombing and bombed.

Solemn columnist

We will take a look at the full list of words with a silent “b” in “mb” at the end of this article, but there is also another combination causing problems: “mn”.

column – just like in “mb”, only the “m” is pronounced, but note that it is retained in the word columnist. Pay special attention to the vowels. There is no [ʌ], so “column” and “color” do not start with the same syllable, and also no [juː], so it doesn't rhyme with “volume”.

solemn – the opposite of cheerful, and with difficult pronunciation, too.

mnemonic – I know, by now you are expecting a mnemonic that will help you remember all that. Well, the word itself is not it―instead of the “n” being silent, like in column, it's the “m” that is silent here.

To finish our “mb” list, here are 10 more:

succumb – that's all for now. Feel free to succumb to the temptation to read the next chapter: