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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. [7] Reanalysis of a word's history or original form can affect its spelling, pronunciation, or meaning.
Examples of folk etymology such as interpreting asparagus as "sparrow-grass". [4] These are cases where speakers deduce an incorrect word origin. Another folk etymology is the assumption that the New York place name Fishkill (on Fishkill Creek) means a place to kill fish.
When a false etymology becomes a popular belief in a cultural/linguistic community, it is a folk etymology (or popular etymology). [1] Nevertheless, folk/popular etymology may also refer to the process by which a word or phrase is changed because of a popular false etymology.
Backronyms may be invented with either serious or humorous intent, or they may be a type of false etymology or folk etymology. The word is a portmanteau of back and acronym. [1] A normal acronym is a word derived from the initial letters of the words of a phrase, [2] such as radar from "radio detection and ranging". [3]
The process of folk etymology usually took over, whereby a false meaning was extracted from a name based on its structure or sounds. Thus, for example, the toponym of Hellespont was explained by Greek poets as being named after Helle, daughter of Athamas, who drowned there as she crossed it with her brother Phrixus on a flying
For example, the word uneventful is conventionally bracketed as [un+[event+ful]], and the bracketing [[un+event]+ful] leads to completely different semantics. Rebracketing is the process of seeing the same word as a different morphological decomposition, especially where the new etymology becomes the conventional norm.
First reference gives the word as the local pronunciation of go out; the second as "A water-pipe under the ground. A sewer. A flood-gate, through which the marsh-water runs from the reens into the sea." Reen is a Somerset word, not used in the Fens. Gout appears to be cognate with the French égout, "sewer". Though the modern mind associates ...
Traditions, an 1895 bronze tympanum by Olin Levi Warner over the main entrance of the Thomas Jefferson Building at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.. A tradition is a system of beliefs or behaviors (folk custom) passed down within a group of people or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past.