Why the silent letter b appears in the English words debt and doubt
It turns out that the strange silent “b” in “debt” and “doubt” is a fairly late addition. Borrowed from the French “dette” and “doute”, the words displeased the English intellectuals of the sixteenth century, who resolved to add a “b” to the spelling in order to point to the Latin descent of the words from “debitum” and “dubitare”