... first syllable (giving rise, by analogy, to an habitual offender, an humanitarian, an hallucinatory image, and an harassed schoolteacher) Thus no authority countenances an history[emphasis added], ... added], though a few older ones prefer an historian and an historical Today, however, an hypothesis and an historical are likely to strike readers and listeners as affectations As Mark Twain once wrote, ... heroic, and historical: 'Correct writers of the American language not put an before those words' (The Stolen White Elephant,1882) Anyone who sounds the h- in such words should avoid pretense and...