The spelling of the word "neath" may seem unusual, but it follows the rules of English phonetics. It is often pronounced as "nēth" and is commonly used as a shortened form of the word "underneath." The correct IPA phonetic transcription for "neath" is /niːθ/. The "ea" combination is pronounced as a long "e" sound, and the "th" sound is represented by the theta symbol in the IPA. Even though it may not be commonly used in everyday language, "neath" remains an accepted and valid word in modern English.
* The statistics data for these misspellings percentages are collected from over 15,411,110 spell check sessions on www.spellchecker.net from Jan 2010 - Jun 2012.
The word "neath" is a contraction of the phrase "neath the", meaning "beneath the". It is commonly used in poetry and older literature. The etymology of "neath" can be traced back to Middle English, where "neeth" was derived from the phrase "ne + eth", with "ne" meaning "not" and "eth" expressing a location. Over time, "neath" emerged as a shortened form of "neeth", and its usage continued to evolve in literature.