Folk etymology: Difference between revisions - Wikipedia
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'''Folk etymology''', in its basic sense, refers to popularly held (and often false) beliefs about the origins of specific words and phrases, especially where these originate in "common-sense" assumptions and the construction of ex post facto narratives rather than serious research (compare [[folk science]], [[folk psychology]] etc.). The phenomenon leads to distinct but related usages for the phrase in [[historical linguistics]] and in [[folklore]]. In the former, the term has long referred to a change in the pronunciation, meaning, or spelling of a word<ref name=langhist>{{cite book|last=Sihler|first=Andrew L.|title=Language History: an introduction|publisher=John Benjamins|year=2000|pages=86–88|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=85zS_w_AaP0C&pg=PA86&dq=%22folk+etymology%22&ei=iUkzSoyZK4GczQTOntSBCQ | isbn=9789027236975}}</ref> under the influence of such folk beliefs about its origins.<ref>{{cite book|last=Sihler|first=Andrew L.|title=Language History: an introduction|publisher=John Benjamins|year=2000|pages=20|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=85zS_w_AaP0C&pg=PA86&dq=%22folk+etymology%22&ei=iUkzSoyZK4GczQTOntSBCQ | isbn=9789027236975}}</ref> Linguists who have specified the meaning of the term "folk" in this case mean by it "amateurs" or "non-linguists."<ref>Preston[http://www.scribd.com/doc/13160450/Bauer-Folk-Etymology]</ref> The usage is established, though some writers defend their technical usage against use of the terms in their commensense meaning of "amateur etymology"<ref>"The frequently encountered interpretation of this technical term of historical linguistics in the sense of a mere amateur etymology is itself a wrong conclusion from the word elements. By folk etymology is known always a specific phenomenon of language change, not a merely false etymology." Medeis, this is your source, so you'll have to supply the rest </ref> and some contemporary scholars acknowledge the incorrectness of the term for the phenomenon more precisely described as "morphological re-analysis."<ref>L. Bauer [[http://www.scribd.com/doc/13160450/Bauer-Folk-Etymology] ]</ref> Folklorists regularly use the term <ref>from Snopes.com: "A constant of folk etymologies seems to be that the odder a word sounds to us, the sillier the story we invent to explain its origins...." sv pumpernickel; "I'm not quite sure what to make of this folk etymology..." ("red light district" so-named because railmen left their lanterns at the door of the brothel; hardly morphological re-analysis; note the causalness of the usage, earmark of the established phrase, as linguists usually take it). "Pluck Yew" is aid to be a folk etymology; the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette treats of the folk etymology of "Lord Love a Duck."; “folk etymologies” are explicitly treated as equivalent to “etymological myths” in a course a U-Ontario [http://www.uwo.ca/classics/undergrad/CS%202800A%20Fall%202010.pdf];Sir James Fraser equates the two in note 1 p. 91 of his ed’n of Apollodorus (cites C.G. Heyne); David Wilton “Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends”. Oxford UP 2004</ref> to refer to [[belief tale]]s<ref>"clever story" or "pretty fantasy"; S Eisiminger (The Journal of American Folklore Vol. 91, No. 359 (Jan. - Mar., 1978), pp. 582-584;) the narrative associated with a given etymology is called “clever story or pretty fantasy;” </ref> about the origins of a given word or phrase.
In [[historical linguistics]], '''Folk etymology''' is a change in the pronunciation, meaning, or spelling of a word under the influence of popular beliefs about its origins.<ref name=langhist>{{cite book|last=Sihler|first=Andrew L.|title=Language History: an introduction|publisher=John Benjamins|year=2000|pages=86–88|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=85zS_w_AaP0C&pg=PA86&dq=%22folk+etymology%22&ei=iUkzSoyZK4GczQTOntSBCQ | isbn=9789027236975}}</ref><ref>''[[OED]]'', second edition, 1989.</ref><ref>R.L. Trask (1996). ''A Dictionary of Phonetics and Phonology''. London; New York: Routledge.</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Sihler|first=Andrew L.|title=Language History: an introduction|publisher=John Benjamins|year=2000|pages=20|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=85zS_w_AaP0C&pg=PA86&dq=%22folk+etymology%22&ei=iUkzSoyZK4GczQTOntSBCQ | isbn=9789027236975}}</ref>
==Source and influence of false etymologies==
==Folk etymology as a productive force==▼
The technical term "folk etymology", a translation of the [[German language|German]] ''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 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{{Citation needed|date=August 2009}}often been rejected by modern linguists. The etymologies of [[Humanism|humanist]] scholars in the early modern period began to produce more reliable results, but many of their hypotheses have been superseded. UntilEven academictoday, linguisticsknowledge developedin the comparativefield studyadvances ofso [[philology]]rapidly andthat the developmentmany of the lawsetymologies underlyingin [[soundcontemporary changes]],dictionaries theare derivation of words was a matter mostly of guess-workoutdated.
=== Association with urban legends ===
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''.<ref>"The Origins and Development of the English Language", 4th ed., Thomas Pyles and John Algeo, 1993.</ref>
Some etymologies are part of [[urban legend]]s, and seem to respond to a general taste for the surprising, counterintuitive and even scandalous. One common example has to do with the phrase ''[[rule of thumb]]'', meaning a rough measurement. 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).<ref>[http://www.quinion.com/words/qa/qa-rul1.htm World Wide Words etymology of "rule of thumb"]</ref>
In the [[United States]], many of these scandalous legends have had to do with [[racism]] and [[slavery]]. Common words such as ''picnic'',<ref>[http://www.snopes.com/language/offense/picnic.htm Urban Legends reference pages on supposed etymology of picnic]</ref> ''buck'',<ref>[http://www.snopes.com/language/offense/buck.htm Urban Legends reference pages on supposed etymology of buck]</ref> and ''crowbar''<ref>[http://www.snopes.com/language/offense/crowbar.asp Urban Legends reference pages on supposed origin of crowbar]</ref> 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 ''[[Controversies about the word "niggardly"|niggardly]]'' led to the resignation of a U.S. public official because it sounded similar to the word ''[[nigger]]'', despite the two words being unrelated etymologically.<ref>[http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mniggard.html Article on the etymology of the word niggardly]</ref>
▲===Folk etymology as a productive force===
The term "folk etymology", as referring both to erroneous beliefs about derivation and the consequent changes to words, is derived from the [[German language|German]] ''Volksetymologie''.<ref name=langhist/> Similar terms are found in other languages, e.g. ''volksetymologie'' in [[Dutch language|Dutch]], [[Afrikaans]] ''volksetimologie'', [[Danish language|Danish]] ''folkeetymologi'', [[Swedish language|Swedish]] ''folketymologi'', and full parallels in non-Germanic languages, e.g. [[Hungarian language|Hungarian]] ''népetimológia'', [[French language|French]] ''étymologie populaire'' and [[Israeli Hebrew]] ''etimológya amamít'' (popular etymology). Examples of alternative names are Italian ''pseudoetimologia'' and ''paretimologia'' (<''paraetimologia''), as well as English ''ety'''myth'''ology''.<ref>See [[Ghil'ad Zuckermann|Zuckermann, Ghil‘ad]] (2006), "''''Etymythological''' Othering' and the Power of 'Lexical Engineering' in Judaism, Islam and Christianity. A Socio-Philo(sopho)logical Perspective", ''Explorations in the Sociology of Language and Religion'', edited by Tope Omoniyi and Joshua A. Fishman, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 237-258.</ref> The phenomenon 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, 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. 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 [[Oxford English Dictionary|OED]], one might read that the word was altered by pseudo-etymology, or false etymology.) Pyles and Algeo give the example of "chester drawers" for "chest of drawers"; similarly, "chaise lounge" for "chaise longue".<ref>"The Origins and Development of the English Language", 4th ed., Thomas Pyles and John Algeo, 1993.</ref>
The term "folk etymology" is thus used to refer to the change itself, and knowledge of the popular etymology is necessary to understand the (more complex) true etymology of the resulting word. Other misconceptions which leave the word unchanged may of course be ignored, but are generally not called popular etymology.
False etymologies are a consequence of the longstanding interest in putatively original, and therefore normative, meanings of words, a characteristic of [[logocentrism]]. 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. 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'', or ''sand-blind'', from ''samblind'', i.e. semi-, half-blind), and has frequently been the occasion of [[homonym]]s 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.
==Examples of words modified by folk etymology==
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*''[[Wiktionary:shamefaced|shamefaced]]'' from ''[[Wiktionary:shamefast|shamefast]]'' 'caught in shame'
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, [[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.{{cn}}▼
▲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.{{cn}}
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.
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* [http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/fallacy.html Popular fallacies in the attribution of phrase origins]
* [http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=folk+etymology&searchmode=none&p=0 EtymologyOnLine - both true and folk etymologies- here mainly examples of popular etymologies]
* [http://www.snopes.com/language/phrases/lesson.asp "History Lessened" - Urban Legend site snopes.com debunks some common folk etymologies circulating via email]
{{1911}}
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[[Category:Language comparison]]
[[Category:Urban legends]]
[[Category:Folklore| ]]
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