Back in the days when Old English was spoken, the "k" in these sorts of words was not silent, so they would be pronounced as k'nife, k'night, and so on. This pronunciation was even common in the time of William Shakespeare! At some point, people decided that this sort of articulation was too cumbersome, so they stopped voicing the beginning consonant! The same thing happened with "gn" words such as gnome and gnarled. However, other Germanic languages such as German, Swedish, and Dutch kept the "k" and still pronounce it to this day.
This phenomenon occurred with other consonant clusters too. Would you believe that the word 'ring' used to be spelled 'h-r-i-n-g'? Once enunciation of the beginning consonant was ceased, the spelling was changed altogether! This also happened with words like hlud (loud), hnutu (nut), and hwenne (when). Even so, this sort of spelling alteration could not occur for words like knight and know, because then you would never be able to distinguish them from "night" and "now"!
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