If I bid a boy spell the word why, he says, "Double-u, Aitch, Wy, hwi;" and knows that he has spelled and pronounced the word correctly.

Suppose he should take it into his head to follow Dr. Webster's books, and to say, "Oo, he, ye, hwi;" who, but these doctors, would imagine, that such spelling was supported either by "the realities of nature," or by the authority of custom?

Taking its first Anglo-Saxon form to be "Huilic," he thinks it traceable to "hwa, who," or its ablative "hwi," and "lie, like."Ib.