>>>>I'm thinking of phonetics today. The verbs ending with -ic, like frolic and panic. When you add -ing to them, you actually do it royally. You add a -king (frolicking, panicking); ditto for -ed which somehow becomes -ked. Why not frolicing, panicing? That would be more in the tradition of the language: yet another exception to remember.
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>>>It's actually disambiguation. "Icing" as in the cake topping or dangerous aircraft condition has the "c" pronounced as an "s". It's a form of language policing.
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>>>In your examples the "k" is an anti French cedilla.
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>>In my example it's the english language going phonetic, minding the reader instead of minding the origins of the word. Reader is the least deserving stakeholder in the whole matter pretty much everywhere, so why the extra care here? Has someone paniced at the thought of kids having to learn yet another exception? That hasn't stopped anyone before.
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>The discussion doesn't get serious until you're talking about exceptions to exceptions. When people say, "i before e, except after c" I tell them that's ancient weird science ;)

I'm not sure there are any exceptions at all in english language. Exceptions come from rules. English has lists instead.