A false etymology (fake etymology or pseudo-etymology) is a false theory about the origin or derivation of a specific word or phrase. When a false etymology becomes a popular belief in a cultural/linguistic community, it is a folk etymology (or popular etymology). Nevertheless,
folk/popular etymology may also refer to the process by which a word or phrase is changed because of a popular false etymology. To disambiguate the usage of the term "folk/popular etymology",
Ghil'ad Zuckermann
Ghil'ad Zuckermann (, ; ) is an Israeli-born language revivalist and linguist who works in contact linguistics, lexicology and the study of language, culture and identity.
Zuckermann was awarded the Rubinlicht Prize (2023) "for his researc ...
proposes a clear-cut distinction between the derivational-only popular etymology (DOPE) and the
generative popular etymology (GPE): the DOPE refers to a popular false etymology involving no
neologization, and the GPE refers to neologization generated by a popular false etymology.
Such
etymologies
Etymology ( ) is the study of the origin and evolution of words—including their constituent units of sound and meaning—across time. In the 21st century a subfield within linguistics, etymology has become a more rigorously scientific study. ...
often have the feel of
urban legend
Urban legend (sometimes modern legend, urban myth, or simply legend) is a genre of folklore concerning stories about an unusual (usually scary) or humorous event that many people believe to be true but largely are not.
These legends can be e ...
s and can be more colorful and fanciful than the typical etymologies found in dictionaries, often involving stories of unusual practices in particular subcultures (e.g. Oxford students from non-noble families being supposedly forced to write ''sine nobilitate'' by their name, soon abbreviated to ''s.nob.'', hence the word ''
snob
''Snob'' is a pejorative term for a person who feels superior due to their social class, education level, or social status in general;De Botton, A. (2004), ''Status Anxiety''. London: Hamish Hamilton it is sometimes used especially when they pr ...
'').
Source and influence
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
Medieval etymology is the study of the history of words that was conducted by scholars in the European Middle Ages.
Etymology is the study of the origins of words. Before the beginnings of large-scale modern lexicography in the 16th century and t ...
, for example, were plausible given the insights available at the time, but have often been rejected by modern linguists. The etymologies of
humanist
Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential, and agency of human beings, whom it considers the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry.
The meaning of the term "humanism" ha ...
scholars in the early modern period began to produce more reliable results, but many of their hypotheses have also been superseded.
Other false etymologies are the result of specious and untrustworthy claims made by individuals, such as the unfounded claims made by
Daniel Cassidy that hundreds of common English words such as ''
baloney'', ''
grumble'', and ''
bunkum'' derive from the
Irish language
Irish (Standard Irish: ), also known as Irish Gaelic or simply Gaelic ( ), is a Celtic language of the Indo-European language family. It is a member of the Goidelic languages of the Insular Celtic sub branch of the family and is indigenous ...
.
In the United States, some of these scandalous legends have had to do with
racism
Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one Race (human categorization), race or ethnicity over another. It may also me ...
and
slavery
Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavemen ...
; common words such as ''picnic'', ''buck'', and ''crowbar''
have been alleged to stem from derogatory terms or racist practices.
See also
*
List of common false etymologies of English words
:''This incomplete list is not intended to be exhaustive.''
This is a list of common contemporary false etymologies for English words.
Profanity
*Crap: The word "crap" did not originate as a back-formation of British plumber Thomas Crapper's su ...
*
Back-formation
Back-formation is the process or result of creating a neologism, new word via Morphology (linguistics), morphology, typically by removing or substituting actual or supposed affixes from a lexical item, in a way that expands the number of lexemes ...
*
Backronym
A backronym is an acronym formed from an already existing word by expanding its letters into the words of a phrase. Backronyms may be invented with either serious or humorous intent, or they may be a type of false etymology or folk etymology. The ...
*
Bongo-Bongo (linguistics)
In linguistics, Bongo-Bongo is used as a name for an imaginary language. It is most commonly invoked in etymological studies to conceptualize random similarities between unrelated languages. It has also been used as a name for a constructed lang ...
*
Chinese word for "crisis"
In Western popular culture, the Chinese word for crisis ( zh, t=, s=, p=wēijī, wéijī) is often incorrectly said to comprise two Chinese characters meaning 'danger' (, ) and 'opportunity' (, zh, s= 机, t= 機, labels=no). The second charac ...
*
Eggcorn
An eggcorn is the alteration of a word or phrase through the mishearing or reinterpretation of one or more of its elements,, sense 2 creating a new phrase which is plausible when used in the same context. Thus, an eggcorn is an unexpectedly fitti ...
*
Etymological fallacy
An etymological fallacy is an argument of equivocation, arguing that a word is defined by its etymology, and that its customary usage is therefore incorrect.
History
Ancient Greeks believed that there was a "true meaning" of a word, distinct ...
*
False cognate
False cognates are pairs of words that seem to be cognates because of similar sounds or spelling and meaning, but have different etymologies; they can be within the same language or from different languages, even within the same family. For exampl ...
*
False friend
In linguistics, a false friend is a word in a different language that looks or sounds similar to a word in a given language, but differs significantly in meaning. Examples of false friends include English ''embarrassed'' and Spanish ('pre ...
*
Just-so story
In science and philosophy, a just-so story is an untestable narrative explanation for a cultural practice, a biological trait, or behavior of humans or other animals. The pejorative nature of the expression is an implicit criticism that reminds th ...
*
Linguistic interference
Language transfer is the application of linguistic features from one language to another by a bilingual or multilingual speaker. Language transfer may occur across both languages in the acquisition of a simultaneous bilingual. It may also occu ...
*
List of proposed etymologies of OK
Several etymologies have been proposed for the word ''OK'' or ''okay''. The majority can be easily classified as false etymologies, or possibly folk etymologies. H. L. Mencken, in ''The American Language'', lists serious candidates and " ...
*
Phonestheme
A phonestheme ( ; phonaestheme in British English) is a pattern of sounds systematically paired with a certain meaning in a language. The concept was proposed in 1930 by British linguist J. R. Firth, who coined the term from the Greek ''phone'' ...
*
Phono-semantic matching
Phono-semantic matching (PSM) is the incorporation of a word into one language from another, often creating a neologism, where the word's non-native quality is hidden by replacing it with phonetically and semantically similar words or roots f ...
*
Pseudoscientific language comparison
Pseudoscientific language comparison is a form of pseudo-scholarship that aims to establish historical associations between languages by naïve postulations of similarities between them.
While comparative linguistics also studies how languages ...
*
Semantic change
Semantic change (also semantic shift, semantic progression, semantic development, or semantic drift) is a form of language change regarding the evolution of word usage—usually to the point that the modern meaning is radically different from ...
References
{{Reflist
External links
* Richard Lederer
''Spook Etymology on the Internet''
Etymology
Error
Folklore
Urban legends
Misconceptions
Pseudolinguistics
Semantic relations
it:Paretimologia#Paretimologia in senso lato
pt:Etimologia popular