I was just watching countdown (well listening actually) The guy said “Pigeon” and spelled it with a d. Richard Whiteley said “Is that how you spell Pigeon?” I said (mentally) “P. I. D. G. E. O. N. Yes” Then the peple in dictionary corner said “no d”
How can two complete strangers (me and the contestant) make the same unusual mistake of adding a silent ‘d’ to a word? Or did it once have a ‘d’?
It’s not that unusual. Many words with the same sound, like ‘knowledge’, are spelled with the D. I have another English friend who spells it that way too, even though she knows better.
He needed it for the spelling of Wednesday.
It was the same blokes what took the P from hampster and switched the e for an a in grayhound.
I hate those guys.
It’s the same reason they changed munites to minutes. 
I submit that you may also be getting confused with the word pidgin.
I never understood why some people believe it has a D. I always spelled it correctly
A midget?
It could be that you’ve seen it spelled that way in the name of actor Walter Pidgeon and assumed the bird should be spelled the same way.
I wonder if it anything to do with having seen the word pidgin (as in languagues).
It’s an ‘invisible D’ (as opposed to a ‘silent D’).
Not like the silent P in bath then?
I never quite understood why so many people put a p in “hamster”. Is it the subliminal influence of “hamper”? (Hmm, I got a lovely big hampster stuffed with food and drink…)
As for “greyhound”, if you’re going to muck about with the spelling of “grey”, then you can’t complain when other words don’t change to follow suit…
It is the same d that some people put in priviledge.
and in refridgerator
… Which is an interestinbg one, because although the correct spelling is “refrigerator”, the correct spelling in the UK of the shortened version is “fridge”!
Julie
And confusingly, there is a bird (a duck) called a widgeon. In this case, wigeon is a lesser-used alternative.
Is it true that English women are fridgid?
Along a similar vein, I’d like to know who took the R out of sherbe®t, or did I just imagine that whole episode?
Eh? How do you pronounce “sherbet”?
Not to worry. Sherbert is a valid alternate spelling of sherbet, with a corresponding alternate pronunciation.