Fill in the blank of the following statement with one word, the first letter of which is already given as a clue. Note that you are to fill in ONE word only, and you are not allowed to change the letter given.

H refers to a process of sound assimilation in which one of two phonetically similar syllables within a word is lost. For example, the Old English word “Engla-land” (“the land of the Angles”) came to be pronounced “England”.