Folk Etymology - Examples of Words Modified By Folk Etymology

Examples of Words Modified By Folk Etymology

In linguistic change caused by folk etymology, the form of a word changes so that it better matches its popular rationalisation. Typically this happens either to unanalyzable foreign words or to compounds where the word underlying one part of the compound becomes obsolete.

Examples of Type A (foreign words):

• andiron, from Middle English aundyre, aundiren, was altered from Anglo-Norman andier by association with iron (ME ire, iren).
• causeway was modified from obsolete causey (French causée) to assimilate it with way.
• chaise lounge from French chaise longue "long chair".
• Charterhouse from Chartreuse, the feminine of Chartreux.
• cockroach was borrowed from Spanish cucaracha but was folk-etymologized as cock + roach.
• crayfish from Middle English crevis (from Anglo-Norman creveis), due to assimilation with fish.
• female (Old French femelle, diminutive of femme "woman"), by assimilation with male (Old French masle, from Latin masculus).
• liquorice, a British variant spelling of licorice, from the supposition that it has something to do with liquid, a supposition made twice before in Anglo-Normand licoris (influenced by licor "liquor") and Late Latin liquirītia (influenced by Latin liquēre), though the ultimate origin is Greek glykýrriza "sweet root".
• penthouse from pentice, borrowed from Anglo-Norman pentiz "attached building" (ultimately from Latin appendicium "appendage"). Note that pentice continues as a technical term in English.
• posthumous, as though related to humus, soil, although it is a specialized sense of Latin postumus, "last".
• sparrow-grass, a dialectal form of asparagus.
• York, which came from the Old Norse Jórvík, meaning "horse bay", was re-interpreted from Old English Eoforwic, itself folk-etymologized as "wild-boar town". Eoforwic came from Latin Eboracum, borrowed from Celtic *Eborakon (cf. Welsh Efrog), meaning "yew thicket, stand of yew-trees" (cf. Scottish Gaelic iubhar, Welsh efwr "cow parsnip").

Examples of Type B (one part becomes obsolete):

• bridegroom from Old English bryd-guma "bride-man", after the Old English word guma "man" (cognate with Latin homo) fell out of use.
• the verb buttonhole in the sense "to detain in conversation", from buttonhold (originally a loop of string that held a button down)
• catty-corner and kitty-corner, modified from cater-corner, after cater "four" had become obsolete.
• curry favor from Middle English curry favel, after favel "chestnut horse" (a traditional symbol of duplicity) became obsolete.
• hangnail from Middle English agnail (Old English angnægl, cognate with anguish and anger).
• island was respelled from iland (although without any pronunciation change), from Old English ī(e)gland after ī(e)g "island" became obsolete. The new spelling was evidently based on an analysis of island as isle-land, from isle (an Old French word, going back to Latin insula).
• The archaic term lanthorn was a folk etymology from lantern (as old lanterns were glazed with strips of cows' horn), which never displaced the original term.
• sand-blind (as if "blinded by the sand") from Old English sam-blind "half-blind" (sam- is a once-common prefix cognate with "semi-").
• shamefaced from shamefast "caught in shame". In this case, the original meaning of fast — "fixed in place" — is not completely obsolete, but is restricted mostly to frozen expressions such as "stuck fast".
• wormwood replaced Middle English wermode, from Old English wermōd, with worm referring to its leaves being used as a vermifuge, and wood for its bitter taste; cf. dialectal German Wurmtod (< Wurm "worm") vs. standard Wermut or Dutch wormmoedt vs. wermoet. The Germanic terms (incl. Dutch wermoet) come from *warja-mōdō, a compound of warjanan "to hinder" + mōdaz "the mind", perhaps in reference to the effects of absinthism.