A Circumflex for an ‘s’

Take the French word ‘forêt’, drop the circumflex accent and add an ‘s’, what do you get? Forest. Ok, let’s now do the same with ‘hôpital’ and we get hospital. Is this a coincidence?

Pas vraiment. In the 18th Century, the ‘s’ in some French words was dropped and replaced by a circumflex accent. As many French words entered the English language in the 11th Century, the words had not yet dropped their 's', hence forest and forêt. Below are a few more examples:

Isle – île.
ospital – hôpital.
ostel – hôtel.
castel – château.
coste – côte.
conqueste – conquête.