Citizendia
Your Ad Here

A false etymology is an assumed or postulated etymology that current consensus among scholars of historical linguistics holds to be incorrect. Etymology is the study of the History of Words &mdash when they entered a language from what source and how their form and meaning have changed over time Historical linguistics (also called diachronic linguistics) is the study of language change Many false etymologies may be described as "folk etymologies", the distinction being that folk etymologies are widely believed to be true, and of anonymous origin. Folk etymology is a term used in two distinct ways A commonly held misunderstanding of the origin of a particular word a False etymology.

Folk etymology or popular etymology are established terms for a false etymology that grows up anonymously in popular lore. A modern folk etymology may be thought of as a linguistic urban legend, but folk etymologies can be very old and even establish themselves as accepted fact among scholars.

The term may be used in two distinct ways:

Erroneous etymologies can exist for many reasons. Some are simply outdated. 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. Medieval etymology is the study of the history of words as conducted by scholars in the European Middle Ages. The etymologies of humanist scholars in the early modern period began to produce more reliable results, but many of their hypotheses have been superseded. Even today, knowledge in the field advances so rapidly that many of the etymologies in contemporary dictionaries are outdated.

False etymologies are a consequence of the longstanding interest in putatively original, and therefore normative, meanings of words, a characteristic of logocentrism. In Critical theory and Deconstruction, logocentrism is a phrase coined by the German philosopher Ludwig Klages in the 1920s to refer to the perceived tendency 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, sometimes right but more often wrong, based on superficial resemblances of form and the like. See Comparative linguistics for the narrower field of "comparative philology" Sound change includes any processes of Language change that affect pronunciation ( phonetic change) or sound system structures ( Phonological change This popular etymology has had a powerful influence on the forms which words take (e. g. , crawfish or crayfish, from the French crevis, modern crevisse, and has frequently been the occasion of homonyms resulting from different etymologies for what appears a single word, with the original meaning(s) reflecting the true etymology and the new meaning(s) reflecting the 'incorrect' popular etymology. In linguistics a homonym is one of a group of words that share the same pronunciation but have different meanings and are usually spelled differently

The term folk etymology, as referring both to erroneous beliefs about derivation and the consequent changes to words, is derived from the German Volksetymologie. Similar terms are found in other languages, e. g. , Volksetymologie itself in Dutch, Afrikaans Volksetimologie, Danish Folkeetymologi, Swedish Folketymologi, and full parallels in non-Germanic languages, e. g. French étymologie populaire, Hungarian népetimológia; an example of an alternative name is Italian pseudoetimologia.

Folk etymology becomes especially interesting when it feeds back into the development of the word and thus becomes a part of the true etymology. Because a population wrongly believes a word to have a certain origin, they begin to pronounce or use the word in a manner appropriate to that perceived origin, in a kind of misplaced pedantry. A pedant, or pædant, is a person who is overly concerned with Formalism and Precision, or who 'makes a show of learning' Thus a new standard form of the word appears which has been influenced by the misconception. In such cases it is often said that the form of the word has been "altered by folk etymology". (Less commonly, but found in the etymological sections of the OED, one might read that the word was altered by pseudo-etymology, or false etymology. The Oxford English Dictionary ( OED) published by the Oxford University Press (OUP is a comprehensive Dictionary of the English ) Pyles and Algeo give the example of "chester drawers" for "chest of drawers"; similarly, "chase lounge" for "chaise longue".

Some etymologies are part of urban legends, and seem to respond to a general taste for the surprising, counterintuitive and even scandalous. An urban legend or urban myth is a form of modern Folklore consisting of stories thought to be factual by those circulating them One common example has to do with the phrase rule of thumb, meaning a rough measurement. A rule of thumb is a principle with broad application that is not intended to be strictly accurate or reliable for every situation An urban legend has it that the phrase refers to an old English law under which a man could legally beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb (though no such law ever existed). [3] The same idiom exists in other cultures – in Finland as "nyrkkisääntö" and in German-speaking countries as "Faustregel"; both mean "rule of fist".

In the United States, many of these scandalous legends have had to do with racism and slavery. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the List of racism-related topics|Racism by country Racism, by its simplest definition is the belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that As a social-economic system slavery is a legal institution under which a Person (called "a slave" is compelled to work for another Common words such as picnic,[4] buck,[5] and crowbar[6] have been alleged to stem from derogatory terms or racist practices. The "discovery" of these alleged etymologies is often believed by those who circulate them to draw attention to racist attitudes embedded in ordinary discourse. On one occasion the use of the word niggardly led to the resignation of a U. There have been several controversies about the word "niggardly", an adjective meaning "stingy" or "miserly" in the United States due to the S. public official because it sounded similar to the word nigger, despite the two words being unrelated etymologically. Nigger is a Noun in the English language, most notable for its usage in a derogatory context to refer to Black people, and also as an informal [7]

Another false etymology claims that the term cracker dates back to slavery in the antebellum South. Georgia Cracker refers to the original American pioneer Settlers of the Province of Georgia (later the State of Georgia) and their descendants This is based on tales of overseers using bullwhips to discipline African slaves, with the sound of the whip described as "cracking". A bullwhip is a single-tailed whip, usually made of braided leather which was originally used as a farmer's tool for working with livestock However, there is no evidence of this usage prior to the 20th-century, suggesting this is a neologism created through cultural assumptions. A neologism (from Greek neo = "new" + logos = "word" is a word that although devised relatively recently in a specific time period has been The term actually has much older origins in the British Isles, based on a term for braggarts. [8][9]

Contents

Examples of words modified by folk etymology

More recent examples:

Other changes due to folk etymology include:

When a back-formation rests on a misunderstanding of the morphology of the original word, it may be regarded as a kind of folk etymology. The Chartreux is an internationally recognized breed of domestic Cat from France. Glazing is a transparent part of a Wall, usually made of Glass or Plastic ( acrylic and Polycarbonate) A horn is a pointed projection of the Skin on the head of various Mammals consisting of a covering of horn ( Keratin and other Proteins In Etymology, back-formation refers to the process of creating a new Lexeme (less precisely a new "word" by removing actual or supposed Affixes

In heraldry, a rebus coat-of-arms (which expresses 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. Canting arms is a technique used in European Heraldry whereby the name of the individual or community represented in a Coat of arms is "translated" into

The same process sometimes influences the spelling of proper names. The name Antony/Anthony is often spelled with an "h" because of the Elizabethan belief that it is derived from Greek ανθος (flower). In fact it is a Roman family name, probably meaning something like "ancient".

Further examples

See the following articles that discuss folk etymologies for their subjects:

Other languages

The French verb savoir (to know) was formerly spelled sçavoir, in order to link it with the Latin scire (to know). A Tower which contains one or more bells or which is obviously designed to hold bells (even if it has none is a bell tower. The blunderbuss is a muzzle-loading Firearm with a short large Caliber barrel, which is flared at the muzzle, and used with The phrase "cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey " is a Colloquial expression used by some English speakers The Brent Goose ( Branta bernicla) a Goose of the Genus Branta, is known in North America as Brant. A Caesarean section (or Cesarean section in American English) also known as C-section, is a form of Childbirth in which a surgical A chaise longue (ʃɛzˈlɔ̃ɡ French "long chair" is an Upholstered Couch in the shape Chav (ʧæv or Charv/Charva (ʧɑːv Dormice are Rodents of the family Gliridae. (This family is also variously called Myoxidae or Muscardinidae by different taxonomists Ducking-stools and cucking-stools are chairs formerly used for Punishment. Gringo (feminine gringa) is a Spanish and Portuguese word used in Latin America to denote foreign non-native The Jerusalem artichoke ( Helianthus tuberosus) also called the sunroot or sunchoke or earth apple or topinambur, is a species In the field of computer security phishing is the Criminally Fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames Passwords A poll tax, head tax, or capitation is a Tax of a uniform fixed amount per individual (as opposed to a percentage of income A rake is defined as a man habituated to immoral conduct Rakes are frequently Stock characters in novels Amelanchier, also known as shadbush, serviceberry, sarvisberry, juneberry, Saskatoon, shadblow, shadwood Sic is a Latin word meaning "thus" "so" "as such" or "just as that" Sincerity is the Virtue of one who speaks truly about his or her own feelings thoughts desires Welsh rarebit, Welsh rabbit, or more infrequently rarebit is traditionally a savory sauce made from a mixture of cheese and various other ingredients and served hot In fact it is derived from sapere (to be wise).

The spelling of the English word posthumous reflects a belief that it is derived from Latin post humum, literally "after the earth", in other words after burial. In fact the Latin postumus is an old superlative of post (after), formed in the same way as optimus and ultimus.

The spelling of the English word lethal reflects a belief that it is derived from Lethe, the river in the mythological kingdom of the dead. In Classical Greek, Lethe (λήθη Classical Greek, Modern Greek:) literally means "forgetfulness" or "concealment" In fact it comes from the unconnected Latin word letum, meaning death.

In British English, aubergines are sometimes called "mad apples". The eggplant, aubergine, or brinjal ( Solanum melongena) is a plant of the family Solanaceae (also known as the nightshades The Italian word for the aubergine is melanzana, which was misheard as mela insana.

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. A bachelor is a man above the Age of majority who has never been married (see single) 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. Lisbon (Lisboa liʒˈboɐ is the Capital and largest city of Portugal. grc-Latn Odysseus or la Ulysses ( Greek grc-Latn Odysseus; Latin: la Ulixes or more commonly Ulysses) oʊˈdɪsiəs

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 ("well come" or "good wind") after the Roman conquest. Benevento is a town and Comune of Campania, Italy, capital of the Province of Benevento, 50 km northeast of Naples.

In the Alexandrian period, and in the Renaissance, many (wrongly) explained the name of the god Kronos as being derived from chronos (time), and interpreted the myth of his swallowing his children as an allegory meaning that Time consumes all things. The Renaissance (from French Renaissance, meaning "rebirth" Italian: Rinascimento, from re- "again" and nascere Cronus or Kronos, ( Ancient Greek Κρόνος Krónos) was the leader and the youngest of the first generation of Titans, divine descendants

The American Grizzly bear is so named because its hair is grizzled or silver-tipped, but its name was later mistakenly derived from grisly meaning "horrible". The Grizzly Bear (Ursus arctos horribilis, also known as the Silvertip Bear, is a Subspecies of Brown bear (Ursus arctos that lives This error has been perpetuated in the grizzly bear's scientific trinomial name: Ursus arctos horribilis. In zoology, a trinomen, or trinominal name refers to the name of a Subspecies.

Acceptability of resulting forms

The question of whether the resulting usage is "correct" or "incorrect" depends on one's notion of correctness; at any rate it is a separate issue from the question of whether the assumed etymology is correct. When a confused understanding of etymology produces a new form today, there is typically resistance to it on the part of those who see through the confusion, but there is no question of long-established words being considered wrong because folk etymology has affected them. Chaise lounge and Welsh rarebit are disparaged by many, but shamefaced and buttonhole are universally accepted. See prescription and description. In Linguistics, prescription can refer both to the codification and the enforcement of rules governing how a language is to be used

Influence on spelling

Over time, many words have been altered in order to better reflect false Latin or Greek etymologies. Island (previously iland) and ptarmigan (previously tarmigan) are two such words. See English spelling reform—successes in spelling complication. English spelling reform is the collective term for various campaigns and efforts to change the Spelling of the English language to make it simpler and more rationally

See also

Further reading

References

  1. ^ OED, second edition, 1989. The Oxford English Dictionary ( OED) published by the Oxford University Press (OUP is a comprehensive Dictionary of the English
  2. ^ R. L. Trask (1996). A Dictionary of Phonetics and Phonology. London; New York: Routledge.
  3. ^ World Wide Words etymology of "rule of thumb"
  4. ^ Urban Legends reference pages on supposed etymology of picnic
  5. ^ Urban Legends reference pages on supposed etymology of buck
  6. ^ Urban Legends reference pages on supposed origin of crowbar
  7. ^ Article on the etymology of the word niggardly
  8. ^ Etymology of the word cracker
  9. ^ Article on false etymology of the word cracker

External links

Dictionary

false etymology

-noun

  1. An incorrect explanation of the origin of a word
© 2009 citizendia.org; parts available under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License, from http://en.wikipedia.org
 Dapyx Software network: MP3 Explorer | Ebook Manager | Zenithic