This has a good list of words that came from misconceptions about etymology.
- “Crayfish”/“crawfish” mistakenly associated with “fish,” from Old French “crevice,” diminutive of their word for crab.
- A really great one: “chaise lounge” from the French “chaise longue” meaning long chair, the second word confused with the existing English word “lounge” meaning waiting or relaxing. Especially funny since the word order is swapped.
- “Cockroach” from the Spanish word for the insect, “cucaracha,” mistakenly identified with English words “cock” and “roach” (a type of fish, apparently)
-“Island” is from Old English “igland” which goes via Germanic back to PIE for “water” + “land.” But the spelling with the silent “s” comes from confusion with “isle,” an unrelated word from Old French.
- "Hangnail" used to mean a corn on the foot, from Old English "anguished" + "nail." Somehow the spelling got mixed up to "hang" and it started referring to a piece of skin/nail hanging.
It looks like English had some word pairs where in Latin the noun was roughly the verb plus “-ion,” like “opine” and “opinion,” but we recognized that pattern and erroneously applied it to other English nouns ending in “-ion” by dropping the suffix to create a noun, without actually inheriting the second word form from Latin. The example given is “resurrection” from Latin via Old French, and “resurrect” formed much later directly from the English noun. It’s a little confusing because it seems like, at least in the “resurrect” case, it also follows the rules of Latin, but I guess it’s just notable because in English it spawned much later from the existing English word rather than actually making its way organically to English from Latin.
Also “asset” and “assets” is from the Anglo-French singular noun “assetz,” mistakenly interpreted as plural because of the “s” sound at the end. There are tons of examples like this where the ends of words are incorrectly identified as suffixes and thus new words are formed by removing the fake suffix, like “edit” from “editor.” False positives in human pattern recognition.
This is the garden path thing of placing the parentheses in the wrong places, except for roots and affixes within a word, rather than within a sentence.
We erroneously included the Arabic word “al” (meaning “the”) in a bunch of nouns: algorithm, algebra, alcohol, alfalfa, alkaline, alcove, alchemy. Then in the 1500s this Agricola guy became obsessed with etymology, recognized the mistake, and corrected it to “chemical.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_chemistry. It wasn’t until the 1700s that “alchemy” started referring to bullshit supernatural chemistry.
The same thing happened with “alligator” from Spanish “el lagarto” meaning “the lizard,” then we humorously overcorrected and stumbled onto “gator.”
Other rebracketing examples:
- “Cybernetics” is cybern+etics, so “cyber-” is a mistake
- “Helicopter” is helico+pter, so “heli-” and “-copter” are mistakes
- The dog breed "labrad•oodle" (a cross between a Labrador Retriever and Poodle) has been rebracketed to "labra•doodle" leading to the "doodle" ending in other poodle crossbreeds such as the goldendoodle and Aussie doodle.
Random interesting things:
- “varsity” is just a 17th century shortening of “university”
- “Fancy” is a 15th century contraction of “fantasy,” and “fan” as in “sports fan” may have come from it and/or the unrelated “fanatic”
- Seems odd that “etymology” is the only English word from the Greek root “etymon” meaning “true sense”
- “Gross” meaning “disgusting” is from 1950s teenage slang, presumed to come from its prior meaning “total” (as in “gross revenue”), which was more commonly used with negative descriptors, e.g. “gross negligence” and “gross stupidity”
My favourite example of rebracketing is the origin of the word "orange".
European languages got the word from Persian or Arabic. But in Persian it's "narang" and in Arabic it's "naranj". (And in the languages they got it from, the word also begins "nar-".) So what happened to the initial "n"?
Answer: rebracketing, not as with "alchemy" from an article present in the source language but with an article that isn't there. You start with "naranj", import it into (say) French: "une norange". A bit of elision and it sounds the same as if that initial "n" weren't there, and after a while people forget about it.
Even better, in 19th-century Scots we find "nirrange" where the word has gained an initial n- again via another rebracketing from the indefinite article "an".
(Also, a nitpick: "etymology" isn't the only English word from "etymon", not only because of "etymologist" and "etymological" and the like but also because "etymon" itself is an English word, though not a common one.)
That’s a good one. I’ve heard that referred to as “faulty separation.” “Apron” was supposed to be “a napron,” not “an apron.” “Umpire” was from Old French “nonper” (meaning not even, i.e. an odd-numbered person to settle a dispute between two even groups).
> The example given is “resurrection” from Latin via Old French, and “resurrect” formed much later directly from the English noun. It’s a little confusing because it seems like, at least in the “resurrect” case, it also follows the rules of Latin
Not really; if the verb were taken from Latin it would be "resurge", not "resurrect".
Compare "surge", which is not "surrect". "Translate" has a similar problem where if you took it from Latin it would be "transfer". Though in that case translate appears to have been a verb independent of transfer already in French.
> We erroneously included the Arabic word “al” (meaning “the”) in a bunch of nouns: algorithm
Algorithm is just someone's name. It seems no more erroneous to include the al- part of his name than it is to include the "van der" in the "van der Waals force"
> Algorithm is just someone's name. It seems no more erroneous to include the al- part of his name than it is to include the "van der" in the "van der Waals force"
I thought the part of his name that led to the word “algorithm” was “al-Khwārizmī” which just means “the person from Khwarazm.” Is that not right?
> The concept of the algorithm is named for the person, al-Khwarizmi, and not for the place, Khwarazm. Why would you remove the al-?
Well, the word does not refer directly to that person, so the fact that its etymological origin happens to be the nisba suffix of that person's name doesn't mean it's not a mistake to include the article. Of course, we can presume that most of the people involved in the gradual coining of the English word "algorithm" (via the Latin translation of his Arabic book, followed by some mistaken association with the Greek arithmos) never even considered the etymology at any step along the way.
> the word does not refer directly to that person, so the fact that its etymological origin happens to be the nisba suffix of that person's name doesn't mean it's not a mistake to include the article.
I can't follow you. Go back to the van der Waals force. Just like Arabic al-, Dutch van and der are grammatical particles; Johannes van der Waals is "John the Walloon". The capitalization is exactly what this would lead you to expect.
And of course the van der Waals force is no more a direct reference to Johannes van der Waals than the algorithm is to Muhammad al-Khwarizmi or the Eiffel Tower is to Gustave Eiffel. And also no less. They're all things that are named after individual people but are not the people themselves. Why aren't you arguing that the name of the van der Waals force was just a big mistake?
When you name something after someone, you use the name of the person being honored. You don't cut their name into random hunks and use those.
> The English word outrage is a loanword from French, where it was formed by combining the adverb outre (meaning "beyond") with the suffix -age; thus, the original literal meaning is "beyondness" – that is, beyond what is acceptable. The rebracketing as a compound of out- with the noun or verb rage has led to both a different pronunciation than the one to be expected for such a loanword (compare umbrage) and an additional meaning of "angry reaction" not present in French.
Brilliant. I'll need to make a point of pronouncing "outrage" to rhyme with "garage" from now on. "It is an oot-RAAZH!"
Folk Etymology:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_etymology
This has a good list of words that came from misconceptions about etymology.
- “Crayfish”/“crawfish” mistakenly associated with “fish,” from Old French “crevice,” diminutive of their word for crab.
- A really great one: “chaise lounge” from the French “chaise longue” meaning long chair, the second word confused with the existing English word “lounge” meaning waiting or relaxing. Especially funny since the word order is swapped.
- “Cockroach” from the Spanish word for the insect, “cucaracha,” mistakenly identified with English words “cock” and “roach” (a type of fish, apparently)
-“Island” is from Old English “igland” which goes via Germanic back to PIE for “water” + “land.” But the spelling with the silent “s” comes from confusion with “isle,” an unrelated word from Old French.
- "Hangnail" used to mean a corn on the foot, from Old English "anguished" + "nail." Somehow the spelling got mixed up to "hang" and it started referring to a piece of skin/nail hanging.
Back-formation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-formation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_back-formation...
It looks like English had some word pairs where in Latin the noun was roughly the verb plus “-ion,” like “opine” and “opinion,” but we recognized that pattern and erroneously applied it to other English nouns ending in “-ion” by dropping the suffix to create a noun, without actually inheriting the second word form from Latin. The example given is “resurrection” from Latin via Old French, and “resurrect” formed much later directly from the English noun. It’s a little confusing because it seems like, at least in the “resurrect” case, it also follows the rules of Latin, but I guess it’s just notable because in English it spawned much later from the existing English word rather than actually making its way organically to English from Latin.
Also “asset” and “assets” is from the Anglo-French singular noun “assetz,” mistakenly interpreted as plural because of the “s” sound at the end. There are tons of examples like this where the ends of words are incorrectly identified as suffixes and thus new words are formed by removing the fake suffix, like “edit” from “editor.” False positives in human pattern recognition.
Rebracketing:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebracketing
This is the garden path thing of placing the parentheses in the wrong places, except for roots and affixes within a word, rather than within a sentence.
We erroneously included the Arabic word “al” (meaning “the”) in a bunch of nouns: algorithm, algebra, alcohol, alfalfa, alkaline, alcove, alchemy. Then in the 1500s this Agricola guy became obsessed with etymology, recognized the mistake, and corrected it to “chemical.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_chemistry. It wasn’t until the 1700s that “alchemy” started referring to bullshit supernatural chemistry.
The same thing happened with “alligator” from Spanish “el lagarto” meaning “the lizard,” then we humorously overcorrected and stumbled onto “gator.”
Other rebracketing examples:
- “Cybernetics” is cybern+etics, so “cyber-” is a mistake
- “Helicopter” is helico+pter, so “heli-” and “-copter” are mistakes
- The dog breed "labrad•oodle" (a cross between a Labrador Retriever and Poodle) has been rebracketed to "labra•doodle" leading to the "doodle" ending in other poodle crossbreeds such as the goldendoodle and Aussie doodle.
Random interesting things:
- “varsity” is just a 17th century shortening of “university”
- “Fancy” is a 15th century contraction of “fantasy,” and “fan” as in “sports fan” may have come from it and/or the unrelated “fanatic”
- Seems odd that “etymology” is the only English word from the Greek root “etymon” meaning “true sense”
- “Gross” meaning “disgusting” is from 1950s teenage slang, presumed to come from its prior meaning “total” (as in “gross revenue”), which was more commonly used with negative descriptors, e.g. “gross negligence” and “gross stupidity”