number
The novocaine spread until tooth nine was a number number than any other tooth in my mouth.
The first 'number' is the comparative of the adjective 'numb' — more lacking in feeling — and its 'b' has never been pronounced in the word's history. The second 'number' is the ordinary noun for a numeral, whose 'b' has always been spoken aloud. Seven identical letters, n-u-m-b-e-r, land back to back and force the reader to swallow one 'b' and voice the next inside a single breath, so the sentence enacts the very numbness it describes.
Meanings
More lacking in physical sensation or emotional feeling; further deadened.
- Each lap left his legs number than the last.
- Grief made the third funeral feel number than the first.
A count or value used to represent a quantity, a position in a sequence, or a unique identifier.
- She jotted his number on a napkin.
- The stadium seats a number just shy of sixty thousand.
Word origin
The noun traces to Latin 'numerus' by way of Old French 'nombre', which is where English picked up a 'b' that French itself later stopped pronouncing but never stopped writing. The comparative adjective is unrelated: it is 'numb' plus '-er', and 'numb' descends from the Middle English past participle of 'nimen' (to seize or take), spelled with a silent 'b' later on the model of unrelated words like 'thumb' and 'climb' — a letter that has never once been spoken in the word's recorded history.
Fun fact
Both pronunciations spell out the identical seven letters, but they arrive at that spelling by two unconnected routes: the noun's silent-in-French, kept-in-English 'b' comes from Latin by way of Old French, while the adjective's silent 'b' was never there at all until English scribes bolted it on by visual analogy — two different centuries, two different languages, one identical and permanently mute letter.