False etymology
Encyclopedia
Folk etymology is change in a word or phrase over time resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a more familiar one. Unanalyzable borrowings from foreign languages, like asparagus, or old compounds such as samblind which have lost their iconic motivation (since one or more of the morpheme
s making them up, like sam-, which meant 'semi-', has become obscure) are reanalyzed in a more or less semantically plausible way, yielding, in these examples, sparrow grass and sandblind.
The term folk etymology, a loan translation from the 19th Century academic German
Volksetymologie, is a technical one in philology
and historical linguistics
, referring to the change of form in the word itself, not to any actual explicit popular analysis.
Volksetymologie from Ernst Förstemann
's essay Ueber Deutsche Volksetymologie in the 1852 work Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiete des Deutschen, Griechischen und Lateinischen (Journal of Comparative Linguistic Research in the Areas of German, Greek and Latin), is used in the science of historical linguistics
to refer to a change in the form of a word caused by erroneous popular beliefs about its derivation.
Erroneous etymologies can exist for many reasons. Some are reasonable interpretations of the evidence that happen to be false. For a given word there may often have been many serious attempts by scholars to propose etymologies based on the best information available at the time, and these can be later modified or rejected as linguistic scholarship advances. The results of medieval etymology
, for example, were plausible given the insights available at the time, but have mostly been rejected by modern linguists. The etymologies of humanist
scholars in the early modern period began to produce more reliable results, but many of their hypotheses have been superseded. Until academic linguistics developed the comparative study of philology
and the development of the laws underlying sound changes, the derivation of words was a matter mostly of guess-work.
The phenomenon becomes especially interesting when it feeds back into the development of the word and thus becomes a part of a new etymology. Believing a word to have a certain origin, people begin to pronounce, spell, or otherwise use the word in a manner appropriate to that perceived origin, in a kind of misplaced pedantry. Thus a new standard form of the word appears which has been influenced by the misconception. This popular etymologizing has had a powerful influence on the forms which words take. Examples in English include 'crayfish
' or 'crawfish', from the French crevis; 'sand-blind', from the older samblind (i.e. semi-, half-blind); or 'chaise lounge' for the original French chaise longue.
In heraldry, canting arms
(which may express a name by one or more elements only significant by virtue of the supposed etymology) may reinforce a folk etymology for a noun proper, usually of a place.
Examples of Type A (foreign words):
Examples of Type B (one part becomes obsolete):
s. Examples:
The Italian word leocorno "unicorn" is a folk etymology, based on leo "lion", of older licorno, itself due to two applications of grammatical rebracketing
:
Late Latin widerdonum (Old French guerdon) was an alteration, due to confusion with Latin donum "gift", of Old High German
widarlôn "recompense, reward, pay-back".
Medieval Latin has a word, bachelarius (bachelor), of uncertain origin, referring to a junior knight, and by extension to the holder of a University degree inferior to Master or Doctor. This was later re-spelled baccalaureus to reflect a false derivation from bacca laurea (laurel berry), alluding to the possible laurel crown of a poet or conqueror.
Olisipona (Lisbon
) was explained as deriving from the city's supposed foundation by Ulysses (Odysseus
), though the settlement certainly antedates any Greek presence.
In Southern Italy in the Greek period there was a city Maloeis (gen. Maloentos), meaning "fruitful". This was rendered in Latin as Maleventum, "ill come" or "ill wind", and renamed Beneventum
("welcome" or "good wind") after the Roman conquest.
The Dutch
word for "hammock
" is hangmat, ("hanging mat") formed as a folk etymology of Spanish hamaca. A similar story goes for the Swedish
word hängmatta and the German
Hängematte.
The Finnish
compound word for "jealous" mustasukkainen literally means "black socked" (musta "black" and sukka "sock"). However, the word is a case of a misunderstood loan translation from Swedish
svartsjuk ("black sick"). The Finnish word sukka fit with a close phonological equivalent to the Swedish sjuk
Islambol (Islambol as one of the names of Istanbul
used after the Ottoman
conquest of 1453)
Morpheme
In linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
s making them up, like sam-, which meant 'semi-', has become obscure) are reanalyzed in a more or less semantically plausible way, yielding, in these examples, sparrow grass and sandblind.
The term folk etymology, a loan translation from the 19th Century academic German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
Volksetymologie, is a technical one in philology
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
and historical linguistics
Historical linguistics
Historical linguistics is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:* to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages...
, referring to the change of form in the word itself, not to any actual explicit popular analysis.
Folk etymology as a productive force
The technical term "folk etymology", a translation of the GermanGerman language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
Volksetymologie from Ernst Förstemann
Ernst Förstemann
Ernst Wilhelm Förstemann was a German historian, archivist and librarian, director of the Sächsische Landesbibliothek in Dresden...
's essay Ueber Deutsche Volksetymologie in the 1852 work Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiete des Deutschen, Griechischen und Lateinischen (Journal of Comparative Linguistic Research in the Areas of German, Greek and Latin), is used in the science of historical linguistics
Historical linguistics
Historical linguistics is the study of language change. It has five main concerns:* to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages...
to refer to a change in the form of a word caused by erroneous popular beliefs about its derivation.
Erroneous etymologies can exist for many reasons. Some are reasonable interpretations of the evidence that happen to be false. For a given word there may often have been many serious attempts by scholars to propose etymologies based on the best information available at the time, and these can be later modified or rejected as linguistic scholarship advances. The results of medieval etymology
Medieval etymology
Medieval etymology is the study of the history of words as conducted by scholars in the European Middle Ages.Etymology is the study of the origins of words. Before the beginnings of large-scale modern lexicography in the 16th century and the discovery of the comparative method in the 18th, a...
, for example, were plausible given the insights available at the time, but have mostly been rejected by modern linguists. The etymologies of humanist
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....
scholars in the early modern period began to produce more reliable results, but many of their hypotheses have been superseded. Until academic linguistics developed the comparative study of philology
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
and the development of the laws underlying sound changes, the derivation of words was a matter mostly of guess-work.
The phenomenon becomes especially interesting when it feeds back into the development of the word and thus becomes a part of a new etymology. Believing a word to have a certain origin, people begin to pronounce, spell, or otherwise use the word in a manner appropriate to that perceived origin, in a kind of misplaced pedantry. Thus a new standard form of the word appears which has been influenced by the misconception. This popular etymologizing has had a powerful influence on the forms which words take. Examples in English include 'crayfish
Crayfish
Crayfish, crawfish, or crawdads – members of the superfamilies Astacoidea and Parastacoidea – are freshwater crustaceans resembling small lobsters, to which they are related...
' or 'crawfish', from the French crevis; 'sand-blind', from the older samblind (i.e. semi-, half-blind); or 'chaise lounge' for the original French chaise longue.
In heraldry, canting arms
Canting arms
Canting arms are heraldic bearings that represent the bearer's name in a visual pun or rebus. The term cant came into the English language from Anglo-Norman cant, meaning song or singing, from Latin cantāre, and English cognates include canticle, chant, accent, incantation and recant.Canting arms –...
(which may express a name by one or more elements only significant by virtue of the supposed etymology) may reinforce a folk etymology for a noun proper, usually of a place.
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):
- 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 ChartreuxChartreuxThe Chartreux is a breed of domestic cat from France and is recognised by a number of registries around the world. It is not recognised by the GCCF in the UK, ostensibly for being too similar to the British Shorthair, one of whose colours is a similar blue-grey. The Chartreux is large and...
. - cockroach was borrowed from Spanish cucaracha but was folk-etymologized as cock + roach.
- crayfish from Middle English crevis (from GermanicGermanic languagesThe Germanic languages constitute a sub-branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic , which was spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
krebiz "little crab"), 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, though the actual origin is Greek glykyrrhiza 'sweet root'.
- penthouse from pentice, borrowed from Anglo-NormanAnglo-Norman languageAnglo-Norman is the name traditionally given to the kind of Old Norman used in England and to some extent elsewhere in the British Isles during the Anglo-Norman period....
pentiz "attached building" (ultimately from Latin appendicium "appendage"). Note that pentice continues as a technical term in English. - posthumous, as though related to humus, [grave-]soil, although it is a specialized sense of Latin postumus, 'last'.
- sparrow-grass, a dialectal form of asparagus.
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.
- catty-corner and kitty-corner, modified from cater-corner, after cater "four" had become obsolete.
- curry favor from Middle EnglishMiddle EnglishMiddle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
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 FrenchOld FrenchOld French was the Romance dialect continuum spoken in territories that span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from the 9th century to the 14th century...
word, going back to Latin insula). - The archaic term lanthorn was a folk etymology from lantern (as old lanterns were glazedGlazingGlazing, which derives from the Middle English for 'glass', is a part of a wall or window, made of glass. Glazing also describes the work done by a professional "glazier"...
with strips of cows' hornHorn (anatomy)A horn is a pointed projection of the skin on the head of various animals, consisting of a covering of horn surrounding a core of living bone. True horns are found mainly among the ruminant artiodactyls, in the families Antilocapridae and Bovidae...
), 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 Old English wermod (cf. vermouth, a borrowing through French of the equivalent German term Wermuth). Old English wermod may originally have stemmed from wer "man" + mōd "proud", in reference to its supposed powers as an aphrodisiacAphrodisiacAn aphrodisiac is a substance that increases sexual desire. The name comes from Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of sexuality and love. Throughout history, many foods, drinks, and behaviors have had a reputation for making sex more attainable and/or pleasurable...
.
Examples of word meanings modified by a folk-etymology-like process
A process similar to folk etymology may result in a change to the meaning of a word based on an imagined etymology connecting it to an unrelated but similar-sounding word. Often this comes about either through the confusion of a foreign or obsolete word (similar to types A and B above) with a more common word, but it can also result from confusion of two words that have become homophoneHomophone
A homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning. The words may be spelled the same, such as rose and rose , or differently, such as carat, caret, and carrot, or to, two, and too. Homophones that are spelled the same are also both homographs and homonyms...
s. Examples:
- The term "forlorn hope" originally meant "shock troop" and is a borrowing from Dutch verloren hoop "lost troop", where hoop is cognate with English heap. But confusion with English hope has given the term an additional meaning of "hopeless venture".
- council, which originally just meant a "meeting" or "group of people", but now means "a committee that leads or governs" through confusion with the homophone counsel "to give advice".
- A jubilee was originally an ancient Jewish tradition (from the Hebrew word yovel, יובל), specifically a year of rest observed once every 50 years. However, it now often means a celebration or time of rejoicing (almost the opposite of its original meaning) through confusion with the unrelated word jubilant.
Further examples
See the following articles that discuss folk etymologies for their subjects:- belfry (architecture)
- blunderbussBlunderbussThe blunderbuss is a muzzle-loading firearm with a short, large caliber barrel, which is flared at the muzzle and frequently throughout the entire bore, and used with shot and other projectiles of relevant quantity and/or caliber. The blunderbuss could be considered to be an early form of shotgun,...
- chaise longue
- crawfish
- dormouseDormouseDormice are rodents of the family Gliridae. Dormice are mostly found in Europe, although some live in Africa and Asia. They are particularly known for their long periods of hibernation...
- ducking stoolCucking stoolDucking-stools and cucking-stools are chairs formerly used for punishment of women in England and Scotland . The term cucking-stool derives from wyuen pine as referred in Langland's Piers Plowman.They were both instruments of social humiliation and censure, primarily for the offense of scolding...
- Jerusalem artichokeJerusalem artichokeThe Jerusalem artichoke , also called the sunroot, sunchoke, earth apple or topinambour, is a species of sunflower native to eastern North America, and found from Eastern Canada and Maine west to North Dakota, and south to northern Florida and Texas...
(from Italian, girasole) - Jordan almondsJordan AlmondsJordan almonds, also known as sugared almonds or confetti, are a type of confectionery consisting of almonds covered with a candy coating in various colors, originating from Italy and particularly typical of the town of Sulmona...
(from French, jardin) - pumpernickle
- serviceberryServiceberryAmelanchier , also known as shadbush, shadwood or shadblow, serviceberry or sarvisberry, wild pear, juneberry, saskatoon, sugarplum or wild-plum, and chuckley pear is a genus of about 20 species of deciduous-leaved shrubs and small trees in the Rose family .Amelanchier is native to temperate regions...
(Sorbus) - Welsh rarebit
- WheatearWheatearThe wheatears are passerine birds of the genus Oenanthe. They were formerly considered to be members of the thrush family Turdidae, but are now more commonly placed in the flycatcher family Muscicapidae...
Other languages
The French verb savoir (to know) was formerly spelled sçavoir, in order to link it with the Latin scire (to know). In fact it is derived from sapere (to be wise).The Italian word leocorno "unicorn" is a folk etymology, based on leo "lion", of older licorno, itself due to two applications of grammatical rebracketing
Rebracketing
Rebracketing is a common process in historical linguistics where a word originally derived from one source is broken down or bracketed into a different set of factors...
:
- Original unicorno "unicorn" was rebracketed as un icorno, producing a new word icorno "unicorn", which replaced unicorno.
- l'icorno "the unicorn" was rebracketed as licorno, producing a new word licorno "unicorn", which replaced icorno.
Late Latin widerdonum (Old French guerdon) was an alteration, due to confusion with Latin donum "gift", of Old High German
Old High German
The term Old High German refers to the earliest stage of the German language and it conventionally covers the period from around 500 to 1050. Coherent written texts do not appear until the second half of the 8th century, and some treat the period before 750 as 'prehistoric' and date the start of...
widarlôn "recompense, reward, pay-back".
Medieval Latin has a word, bachelarius (bachelor), of uncertain origin, referring to a junior knight, and by extension to the holder of a University degree inferior to Master or Doctor. This was later re-spelled baccalaureus to reflect a false derivation from bacca laurea (laurel berry), alluding to the possible laurel crown of a poet or conqueror.
Olisipona (Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...
) was explained as deriving from the city's supposed foundation by Ulysses (Odysseus
Odysseus
Odysseus or Ulysses was a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in the Epic Cycle....
), though the settlement certainly antedates any Greek presence.
In Southern Italy in the Greek period there was a city Maloeis (gen. Maloentos), meaning "fruitful". This was rendered in Latin as Maleventum, "ill come" or "ill wind", and renamed Beneventum
Benevento
Benevento is a town and comune of Campania, Italy, capital of the province of Benevento, 50 km northeast of Naples. It is situated on a hill 130 m above sea-level at the confluence of the Calore Irpino and Sabato...
("welcome" or "good wind") after the Roman conquest.
The Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
word for "hammock
Hammock
A hammock is a sling made of fabric, rope, or netting, suspended between two points, used for swinging, sleeping, or resting. It normally consists of one or more cloth panels, or a woven network of twine or thin rope stretched with ropes between two firm anchor points such as trees or posts....
" is hangmat, ("hanging mat") formed as a folk etymology of Spanish hamaca. A similar story goes for the Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
word hängmatta and the German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
Hängematte.
The Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
compound word for "jealous" mustasukkainen literally means "black socked" (musta "black" and sukka "sock"). However, the word is a case of a misunderstood loan translation from Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
svartsjuk ("black sick"). The Finnish word sukka fit with a close phonological equivalent to the Swedish sjuk
Islambol (Islambol as one of the names of Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...
used after the Ottoman
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
conquest of 1453)
Acceptance of resulting forms
When a word changes in form or meaning owing to folk etymology, there is typically resistance to the change on the part of those who are aware of the true etymology. Many words altered through folk etymology survive beyond such resistance however, to the point where they entirely replace the original form in the language. Chaise lounge and Welsh rarebit are still often disparaged, for example, but shamefaced and the verb buttonhole are universally accepted. See prescription and description.See also
- BackronymBackronymA backronym or bacronym is a phrase constructed purposely, such that an acronym can be formed to a specific desired word. Backronyms may be invented with serious or humorous intent, or may be a type of false or folk etymology....
- Back-formationBack-formationIn etymology, back-formation is the process of creating a new lexeme, usually by removing actual or supposed affixes. The resulting neologism is called a back-formation, a term coined by James Murray in 1889...
- Chinese word for "crisis"
- Corruption (linguistics)
- EggcornEggcornIn linguistics, an eggcorn is an idiosyncratic substitution of a word or phrase for a word or words that sound similar or identical in the speaker's dialect. The new phrase introduces a meaning that is different from the original, but plausible in the same context, such as "old-timers' disease" for...
- False etymologyFalse etymologyFolk etymology is change in a word or phrase over time resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a more familiar one. Unanalyzable borrowings from foreign languages, like asparagus, or old compounds such as samblind which have lost their iconic motivation are...
- HyperforeignismHyperforeignismA hyperforeignism is a non-standard language form resulting from an unsuccessful attempt to apply the rules of a foreign language to a loan word , or occasionally to a word believed to be a loan word. The result reflects "neither the .....
- Johannes Goropius BecanusJohannes Goropius BecanusJohannes Goropius Becanus was a Dutch physician, linguist, and humanist.-Life:He was born Jan Gerartsen van Gorp in the town of Gorp, situated in the municipality of Hilvarenbeek...
- OkayOkay"Okay" is a colloquial English word denoting approval, acceptance, agreement, assent, or acknowledgment. "Okay" has frequently turned up as a loanword in many other languages...
- Phono-semantic matchingPhono-semantic matchingPhono-semantic matching is a linguistic term referring to camouflaged borrowing in which a foreign word is matched with a phonetically and semantically similar pre-existent native word/root....
- Pseudoscientific language comparison
- Slang dictionarySlang dictionaryA slang dictionary is a reference book containing an alphabetical list of slang, vernacular vocabulary not generally acceptable in formal usage, usually including information given for each word, including meaning, pronunciation, and etymology. It can provide definitions on a range of slang from...
External links
- Folk etymologies (a collection of folk etymologies)
- Richard Lederer, Spook Etymology on the Internet
- Popular fallacies in the attribution of phrase origins
- EtymologyOnLine - both true and folk etymologies- here mainly examples of popular etymologies