My fellow Americans; do you refer to air-conditioning as "the AC"?

And it was originally *spelled* without the 'h', reflecting the oldest known (13th century) pronunciation. A bunch of overly officious Age of Reason grammarians observed that it was derived from Latin (via Old French), and so had an 'h' jammed onto it as part of some OCD etymology crusade that they were on at the time. Pronunciation was not changed yet, mind you, just the spelling. Then, roughly 150 years or so later, around the height of the Victorian Era, upper and middle crust Britons noticed the 'h' and began pronouncing it, under the false belief that the *real* pronunciation was yet another corruption foisted upon the language by those smelly, h-dropping East Enders.