Folk etymology

The term folk etymology is a loan translation from German Volksetymologie, coined by Ernst Förstemann in 1852.

[6] Folk etymology is a productive process in historical linguistics, language change, and social interaction.

Until the academic development of comparative linguistics and description of laws underlying sound changes, the derivation of a word was mostly guess-work.

For example, andiron borrowed from Old French was variously spelled aundyre or aundiren in Middle English, but was altered by association with iron.

[14] Other Old French loans altered in a similar manner include belfry (from berfrey) by association with bell, female (from femelle) by male, and penthouse (from apentis) by house.

[16] Anglo-Norman licoris (influenced by licor 'liquor') and Late Latin liquirītia were respelled for similar reasons, though the ultimate origin of all three is Ancient Greek γλυκύρριζα glucúrrhiza 'sweet root'.

[18] The phrase forlorn hope originally meant "storming party, body of skirmishers"[19] from Dutch verloren hoop "lost troop".

[22] A seemingly plausible but no less speculative etymology accounts for the form of Welsh rarebit, a dish made of cheese and toasted bread.

[26] A similar reanalysis caused sandblind, from Old English sāmblind 'half-blind' with a once-common prefix sām- 'semi-', to be respelled as though it is related to sand.

This was an allusion to a fourteenth-century French morality poem, Roman de Fauvel, about a chestnut-coloured horse who corrupts men through duplicity.

[citation needed] The songbird wheatear or white-ear is a back-formation from Middle English whit-ers 'white arse', referring to the prominent white rump found in most species.

[33] The word comes from Old English ang- + nægel 'anguished nail, compressed spike', but the spelling and pronunciation were affected by folk etymology in the seventeenth century or earlier.

[35][29]: 157  Similarly, the word baceler or bacheler (related to modern English bachelor) referred to a junior knight.

By the late Middle Ages its meaning was extended to the holder of a university degree inferior to master or doctor.

This was later re-spelled baccalaureus, probably reflecting a false derivation from bacca laurea 'laurel berry', alluding to the possible laurel crown of a poet or conqueror.

[36][29]: 17–18 In the fourteenth or fifteenth century, French scholars began to spell the verb savoir 'to know' as sçavoir on the false belief it was derived from Latin scire 'to know'.

[41][42][43] In Turkey, the political Democrat Party changed its logo in 2007 to a white horse in front of a red background because many voters folk-etymologized its Turkish name Demokrat as demir kırat 'iron white-horse'.