Is There an "X" in "Especially"?

(our guest post for The Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar)

Jeff Stone is perfectly correct in colorfully noting that "there's no freakin' X in the word 'especially.'"  Yet we can't help fondly remembering those centuries when the word "expecial" meant "singular" or "exceptional," as in the context of accessories designed "to meet the expecial needs of the physician" (Brooklyn Medical Journal, Vol. 8, 1894) or European colonists in the Potomac being advised not to expose themselves to the danger of the Tuscarora War of 1711 "without expecial necessity" (James Rice, Nature and History in the Potomac Country, 2009). 

Our favorite context for the word "expecial" is, of course, the world of algebra!  Back in 1919, a textbook entitled First Course in Algebra embodied "an expecial effort to connect the elements of algebra in a clear and forcible manner with the affairs of every-day life."  If any field is qualified to put an X in "especially," it's algebra!