Suits and Suites
Tricksy Twins
During the reign of Good Queen Bess (1558-1603), an Englishman eager to avoid appearing like a member of a motley crew went abroad in a suite of clothes. However, by 1640 or so, most folks who committed that combination to writing had dropped the e from suite, thereby giving suit of clothes its current form.
A century later, when a suite of rooms entered the English lexicon, the e in suite found a new home. Indeed, spelling suite in this old-timey, faintly French, way suited people so well that suite of rooms survived a sustained attempt by American spelling reformers of the nineteenth century to eliminate the idle vowel.
