Etymology Dictionary
Faulty separation is a concept I was introduced to a few years ago thanks to a Something Awful linguistics thread. In the context it was introduced, it was in reference to how certain words have changed due to how English uses two different indefinite articles depending what the first sound of the following word is.
The example used was the word "apron". This word used to be "napron", but over time there was a shift as "a napron" was misheard as "an apron".
I was curious as to how often this has happened in English. I found six cases, including "apron" through the Etymology Dictionary, although one word is no longer in use.
Apron from Napron
Auger from Nauger
Adder from Nedder
Umpire from Noumpere
Umble from Numble (umble is the edible part of animals that isn't meat)
Nickname from Ekename (went the opposite direction)
Other than the Etymology Dictionary, I can't find any other reference to faulty separation. I wonder if these are actually all the cases or if there are similar faulty separations caused by other word combinations.
2 comments:
I was looking at this again today and then thought of the word opossum. Why the 'o'? You see it spelled possum in common use, will this become a faulty separation?
That's not really a faulty separation as the "O" isn't be shifted to another word, it's just being dropped. This is called apheresis, the dropping of a weak first syllable, and is surprisingly common. Opossum will likely remind in use to distinguish American opossums from Australian possums. A faulty separation would be if we started saying "a nopossum".
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