2366: Names with 'St.' not Named for Saints. Jun 10, 2021
There are places around the UK place names with 'St.' included in it which are not named after any saints. For instance, in Cornwall 'St Dennis' is not actually named after the martyr Denis of Paris but as a misinterpretation of the Cornish 'dinas' (hill-fort). The 'St.' was added later. Likewise, the Cornish village of St Agnes was not named for Agnes of Rome but in this case this is not from Cornish but from Old Norse, namely as a compound from 'hagi' (pasture) and 'nes' (headland). This is particularly notable because Cornwall is about as far from the Danelaw as one can get in England, but there are certain names influenced from Old Norse.
2351: crane & grouse May 26, 2021
The word for a crane in Latin is ‘grus’. In fact, despite the apparent differences these names for the lanky bird are actually cognates, sharing an older root found in many indo-european languages. One might think that the bird known as ‘grouse’—a lot more similar in sound—would be related but it probably has no connection to the Latin ‘grus’. Before it went by its modern name, the grouse was called a 'moorhen', though now this term usually applies to a small, black water-fowl related to the coot.
2339: top-notch May 14, 2021
Origins of phrases are notoriously hard to gauge and are often subject to a number of rival folk-etymologies. The phrase 'top-notch' for instance has been used at least since the mid-19th century but where it comes from is not entirely clear. While the association between 'top' and 'best' is long-established, also seen in 'top-shelf' which may have influenced it, it is not clear what is the notch in question. Some have connected this to mountaineering both in the sense of the mountain itself (more likely) or in the notching to denote the difficulty of the trail (less likely). Others have pointed to phrases like "being knocked down a peg" and other sporting references with the idea that this comes from measuring sticks or even bow-strings, but these have their own problems, especially the archery idea which traced the origin back too far reasonably. While it may have been influenced by lots of factors (probably hiking mostly) phrases and slang is notoriously hard to trace and will be fraught with fiction.
2324: manna Apr 29, 2021
The Biblical substance known as 'manna' in English is מָן (mon) in Hebrew, and I likewise in Arabic does not have this added [ə] at the end. This was definitely added in by the time of introduction of Greek to the region (which happened long before Arabic even existed) with the Greek μάννα (mánna) using this extra vowel and long [n]. This was probably not from Aramaic nor especially an Aramaic phrase though many early writings have claimed this origin for the word and particularly the added extra syllable from Greek.
2302: Nigromancy: A Deliberate Misspelling of 'Necromancy' Apr 5, 2021
Necromancy, sorcery surrounding interactions with the dead, is definitely a form of black magic, and that shows in the historical spelling of the name. 'Necro-' as a combining form is from Greek νεκρός (nekrós) meaning 'dead' as also found in 'necropolis' for instance. Nevertheless, in Middle English (nigromancy) and Medieval Latin (nigromantia) the spelling was obviously changed, and made to align more with the Latin 'niger' (black) to due a presumed—but etymologically erroneous—association with 'black magic'. The spelling was eventually changed to align with the Greek origin during the renaissance.
2286: wrath + -th = wroth...? Mar 20, 2021
'Wrath' and 'wroth' are obviously related, both in meaning and spelling, but not in the way one might assume upon first glance. Rather than being variants in the way 'swim-swam-swum' or 'raise-rise' are with internal vowel change, the Old English for 'wrath' was 'wrǣþþu', equivalent to 'wroth' plus '-th': the same suffix in 'warm-warmth'. 'Wroth' therefore was originally an adjective (Old English: wrāþ; Middle English: wrað), roughly synonymous with 'cruel'. These two are not immediately related to 'wreath', 'writhe', or 'wry' (each related to the others) though many like to connect the sense of twisting to that of anger, in a similar way to what happened with 'wrong' and 'worry'.
2283: Folk Etymology: sovereign, foreign & reign Mar 17, 2021
Though the spelling in English can often paint a picture for the history of the language and etymology of words, this is not the case with the word 'sovereign'. This comes from the Latin 'superānus'—also the root of 'soprano'—from the root 'super' (above) which led to the Old French 'soverain'. The connection to the word 'reign' is entirely from folk etymology. It is believed that the -g- in 'foreign' was also added with association to 'reign'.
2258: Backronyms Feb 20, 2021
There are a number of words used today that are truly from acronyms, such as 'radar' ("radio detection and ranging") but there are many more that people believe to be from acronyms and aren't, like 'posh'. A term 'backronym' was coined to describe this phenomenon when people make an acronym out of a word which was not previously an acronym. This is sometimes used for folk etymology, but also for other reasons such as legal bills or organizations, such as the First Step Act which is technically an acronym for the otherwise quite awkward and cumbersome "Formerly Incarcerated Reenter Society Transformed Safely Transitioning Every Person Act".
Write a comment with any other folk etymology backronyms you may know.
2118: Correction on "Well Good god!" Oct 2, 2020
Correction: It was stated in a post 5 years ago that "'[g]ood', however, comes from the Old English 'gōd', which meant "god, deity"" but this is not true. This is a popular folk etymology, but a look at the terms historically shows this to be clearly off. First off, in the Germanic pantheon, and hence the Old English root, pagan deities were not considered to be clearly and consistently good; that notion came later and from a separate religion. Likewise, 'good' did not have the ethic nor moralistic sense it has not until later, and just meant more along the lines of 'pleasant'.
1903: Why Cherubs are Mistakenly Painted Like Children Mar 1, 2020
Cherubs are angelic beings, and in art they often depicted as childlike, but in the Bible they are described as having 4 heads, that of an eagle, an ox, a lion, and a man, and 4 wings—one set pointing up, and the other covering the body—each one with hands at the end, and humanoid legs with bronze-looking calf-hooves. Full descriptions can be found in the books of Ezekiel and Daniel, with mentions in many other places throughout the Bible. The difference between the artistic depictions is due entirely to rabbinic folk etymology, mistakenly relating the Hebrew כְּרוּב (keruv) to the Aramaic kĕ-raḇyā meaning 'like a child'. For an alternate term to describe these childlike creatures, it is more accurate to say 'putto', since the iconography actually comes from Greek and Roman mythology.
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1713: copper Aug 23, 2019
There's a belief that the term 'copper' for police officer comes from copper badges, but this is folk etymology. Instead, it comes from the verb 'to cop', meaning 'to seize' referencing their arrests. This root is very old however, and it is also related to the modern word 'cheap', since the root word (something like 'kap-') meant 'to grab' and in other languages derivative terms sometimes mean 'to buy'.
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1631: dreidl Jun 2, 2019
Following yesterday's post about the folk-etymology surrounding dreidls, if someone needed further evidence that they're not of Semitic origin, it would be as easy as going to ask a child. 'Dreidl' (דרײדל) comes from 'dreien' meaning 'to turn', like the German 'drehen', but in Hebrew the word is 'sevivon' (סביבון), and this was invented by the 5 year-old son of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda who had invented Modern Hebrew. It is based from the Semitic root meaning 'to turn', but at the time, another word from Hayyim Nahman Bialik, "kirkar", was in use, based on the root for "to spin" but this did not catch on in spoken Hebrew. Many other words were used in Yiddish dialects too, based on Germanic or Slavic words.
1265: the bees knees May 28, 2018
There are a lot of theories about where the phrase "the bees knees" referring to something outstanding, but as with many folk etymology, there is a bit of logically weeding to be done. One theory is that it comes from Italian immigrants to America saying 'business', but this doesn't work for two reasons: the phrase has been around for far longer than Italians were coming to the US, and it originally had the meaning of 'a small thing' so 'business' would not make sense as an derivation for it. Other theories include things such as how it would be related to the collection of pollen, and other biological ideas, but these don't hold up for similar reasons. The prevailing theory is that it went from meaning something small to something great on the pattern of other phrases like "the cat's pajamas", 'flea's eyebrows', 'the canary's tusks', and "the cat's whiskers", though not all of these slang terms from the 1920's have lasted the test of time.
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1036: Rebracketing Oct 10, 2017
Back-formation has been brought up several times on this blog, but while that follows logical processes that people are accustomed to seeing in words with legitimate, productive suffixes, other words are sometimes broken down into different elements incorrectly without following any linguistic patterns necessarily. 'Rebracketing' for example, is a process in the field of historical linguistics, which concerns itself with the study of how languages evolve, in which a word that derived from a single origin is segmented into a set of different elements. One famous example is that of 'hamburger' which is sometimes falsely taken to be from 'ham' and 'burger' as a sort of compound. It could be that without thinking too much about the actual meats involved in the food the word is seen to follow the pattern of other types of burgers, like "turkey-burger" or "veggie-burger", but those two are also retronyms designed to clarify that something is not a hamburger. Indeed, 'burger' itself is only an abbreviated form of 'hamburger', but rebracketing does not need to follow much logic anyway, and this example would only be considered folk etymology.
951: big apple Jul 17, 2017
The nickname 'big apple' as a reference for New York City for a long time had no clear origin, but did have a great amount of folk-etymology surrounding it. More recently, etymologists agree on having found an answer. The first recorded use of the phrase was in 1909 from Edward Martin "Kansas is apt to see in New York a greedy city… It inclines to think that the big apple gets a disproportionate share of the national sap…". Here, and in other instances following this, the association of the city to big apples is thought to be from the idea that things were especially big, both in terms of grandeur but also that there was a lot of money in the area. Though the moniker faded out of use in the 1960's, it was brought back in a tourism-campaign in the 1970's, not to showcase wealth, but to give the impression of cleanliness and brightness to counter the popular image that the city was dirty.
547: Posh Jun 7, 2016
Folk-etymology, or made-up etymology often involves stories that do not have any hard evidence to support it, but are logical enough to fly under the radar sometimes. The exact derivation of 'posh' is unknown and this leaves room for people to swoop in and supply their own. Depending upon where one searches, it is possible to find something saying that 'posh' is an acronym for "port out starboard home", the story being that this denotes the use of the preferable accommodations sailing back and forth England to India as to escape the heat of the sun. Nevertheless, however fun the story is, nothing backs it up as true.