knight

That silent k is a little fossil from a much rougher world. In Old English, cniht meant a boy, a servant, even an attendant — not exactly the glittering armored hero of Arthurian legend. But medieval society loves a rank story, so the word climbed upward: servant, military follower, then noble title, until the thing that once meant “lad” could be conferred by a monarch with a tap of the sword. The same social ladder gave English the verb dub, originally the act of making someone a knight, which is why being "dubbed" still carries a faint echo of ceremony. And the k stayed in the spelling long after English speakers stopped saying it, like a suit of armor left hanging in a hall after the battle was over.