1757: Mishearings and Language Change: "Folk Law" (LITW 10) Oct 6, 2019

Mishearings, such as that featured below, have the ability to affect spelling. Sometimes this is called an 'egg-corn' (from 'acorn') when one person misunderstands a word and replaces it with another existing one. However, this has also happened through history in a way that eventually became permanent, such as with "Elephant and Castle" in London. This is also particularly prone to happen with foreign loan words. In this case, the writer presumably meant to say 'folklore". For more Linguistics in the Wild, click here.