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 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 often have the feel of
urban legends 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'').
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, for example, were plausible given the insights available at the time, but have often been rejected by modern linguists. The etymologies of
humanist scholars in the early modern period began to produce more reliable results, but many of their hypotheses have also been superseded.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; 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
*
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
*
Bongo-Bongo (linguistics)
*
Chinese word for "crisis"
*
Eggcorn
*
Etymological fallacy
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False cognate
*
False friend
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Just-so story
*
Linguistic interference
*
List of proposed etymologies of OK
*
Phonestheme
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Phono-semantic matching
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Pseudoscientific language comparison
*
Semantic change
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