Misdivided creations
January 28th, 2009 at 10:19 pm (Vocabulary)
Recently, I learned that several words in common use are in fact misbegotten coinages, formed by an imperfect split between the article and the noun.
- “Adder” came from “a nadder”
- “Newt” came from “an ewt”
- “Nickname” came from “an ekename” (an “eke” name was an “extra” name)
- “Nuncle” (now obsolete) came from “mine uncle” (a respectful address)
- “for the nonce” came from “for then anes” (obsolete “the ones”)
This kind of word is referred to as a “misdivision” or (more technically) an improper “metanalysis“; actually, there are lots of terms for this error: rebracketing, juncture loss, junctural metanalysis, false splitting, and refactorization, according to Wikipedia.
The evolution of language (and how we can change right along with it) never ceases to amaze me. I’ll have to keep an eye out for more of these!