Folk etymology

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Folk etymology (or popular etymology) is a linguistic term for a category of false etymology which has grown up in popular lore, as opposed to one which arose in scholarly usage.

Folk etymology is particularly important because it can result in the modification of a word or phrase by analogy with the erroneous etymology which is popularly believed to be true. In this case, 'folk etymology' is the trigger which causes the process of linguistic analogy by which a word or phrase changes because of a popularly-held etymology, or misunderstanding of the history of a word or phrase. Here the term 'folk etymology' is also used (originally as a shorthand) to refer to the change itself.

The question of whether the resulting usage is "correct" or "incorrect" depends on one's notion of correctness and is in any case distinct from the question of whether a given etymology is correct.

1 Instances of word change by folk etymology
2 See also
3 Reference
4 External links

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Instances of word change by folk etymology

In linguistic change caused by folk etymology, the form of a word changes so that it better matches its popular rationalisation. For example, the Old English sam-blind ("semi-blind" or "half-blind") became sand-blind (as if "blinded by the sand") when people were no longer able to make sense of the element sam ("half"), and the Old English bryd-guma ("bride-man") became bridegroom after the loss of the Old English word guma ("man", compare French homme) rendered the compound semantically obscure. The silent s in island is also a result of folk etymology. The word, which derives from an Old English compound of ig ("water", surprisingly, cognate to Latin aqua) with land, was erroneously believed to be related to isle, which has a similar meaning but derives from Latin insula ("island"). More recent examples are the French (e)crevisse (likely from Germanic krebiz) which became the English crayfish, and asparagus, which in England became sparrow-grass. Similarly, cater-corner became kitty-corner or catty-corner when the original meaning of cater ("four") had become obsolete.

Other changes due to folk etymology include:

buttonhole from buttonhold (originally a loop of string that held a button down)

hangnail from agnail

penthouse from pentice

sweetheart from sweetard (the same suffix as in dullard and dotard)

shamefaced from shamefast

chaise lounge from chaise longue

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. In heraldry, a rebus coat-of-arms may reinforce a folk etymology for a placename.

For further examples, see the following articles that discuss folk etymologies for their subjects: