V to make (a voiced speech sound) voiceless (使浊音)变清音 [phonetics]
Devoiced and voiced w- in where and so forth coexisted for a long time.
清音的w和在单词where等词中浊音的w共存了一段时间。
Eg My wife is always ticked off in small things and I can't stand her to get devoiced.
我的妻子总是在小事上大发雷霆，我忍受不了她了，想离婚。
Apparently, it was this devoiced, “whispered” w for which Middle English scribes, under French influence, invented the spelling wh-.
显然，正是由于这个清音化，“whispered”中的w在中古英语的文书中，受到法语的影响，发明了拼写wh-。
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