at many times
in many cases
They often die young
as often as not
for much of the time
Middle English alteration of oft. The t in often appears to have been pronounced until late in the 17th cent., but then to have become silent and remained so throughout the 18th and 19th cents. The increasingly common modern spelling pronunciation with the t sound reinserted was stigmatized in the 1930s as ‘vulgar’ but it is now established as a standard alternative to the traditional pronunciation