I just researched this myself after a co-worker told me about it. It’s true, I’m surprised to find. Except that he had to cheat a litle – the books never gave Tom Swift’s middle name or initial, so he assumedp the “A” in order to get TASER
“Tortoise” referred to all three originally; “turtle” was the name of the bird.
The same thing obtains with various the French negatives: ne… rien “nothing” (from Latin res “thing”), ne… personne “nobody,” ne… aucun “none, no” (from Vulgar Latin aliquunum “some one thing”), ne… plus “no more”. In fact, in colloquial speech where “ne” is dropped, plus has developed different, disambiguating pronunciations in the positive and negative in Quebec: /pløs/ for positive and /py/ for negative (so y’en a plusse “there is more,” y’en a pu “there is no more”).
There are other, now archaic words for “not” similar in origin to pas: ne… goutte (“not a drop”), ne… mie (“not a crumb”), ne… point (“not a dot”) – the last one is still sometimes used, though for an archaic effect. There are also archaic constructions where ne is the only negative, such as Qui ne dit mot consent (“who does not say a word, consents” – if you keep silent, you agree).
I like the fact that, unlike most languages, the English word queen is not just the feminine form of the word king, but a separate root, originally “woman” and hence “wife” and then “wife of the king,” and related to such words for “woman” as Swedish kvinna, Greek gune (whence gynecologist), and Persian zen (whence zenana).
Another one that fascinates me is that the common English word thing originally meant “parliament,” of all things, and still does in several languages (Icelandic *þing *, Norwegian ting, Manx Tynwald.) The root started off as meaning “appointed time,” thence “business,” thence “discussion of business,” “council,” “item for discussion at council,” “subject at hand,” and finally “thing.”
Amazingly, a similar semantic development happened with Romance cosa/chose/coisa “thing” – originally from Latin causa “lawsuit” and hence “subject at hand” (causa/cause still mean “lawsuit”).
Tom= cut (Greek)
Sect = cut (Latin)
So you have:
insect (because it is cut into three parts, head, abdomen and thorax) and entomology.
Dissection (cut apart) and anatomy (discrete parts of the body).
When the telegraph was invented, they needed a device to amplify or repeat the signal so messages could travel greater distances. Instead of inventing a new word, they called it a relay based on this existing meaning of the word:
relay: A fresh team, of horses or dogs, to relieve weary animals in a hunt, task, or journey.
It’s as if the electrical signal was carried a distance by horse which got tired and was replaced by a fresh horse to continue carrying the signal.
This post is extremely appropriate for my user name.
And you have “shit”. No kidding. It’s probably from the same root as “sec” (which gives us “scissors”, etc.), and refers to a “little piece of the body that is cut from the rest (when you defecate)”.
P.S. Merci, matt_mcl…fascinating!
The Trivium was a division of the standard medieval university curriculum, so named because it consisted of three parts, grammar, rhetoric and logic. It was foundational for (and thus less advanced and perhaps considered more trivial than) the four subjects of the Quadrivium: geometry, astronomy, arithmetic and music.
What you have given us is one of those folk etymologies that somebody dreamed up one day because it sounded good, I think.
As “people substituting familiar sounds or words for unfamiliar ones” is not etymology at all (as opposed to a process of interest to etymologists), I very much doubt that this is the (or even a) “correct” definition of “folk etymology”. On the other hand, the phrase’s use to mean “an urban legend about the word’s origin” is both appropriate, transparent, and useful (and certainly more appropriate than “urban legend”).
Also, as already pointed out, the word “tortoise” is still in general use in Britain. Furthermore, “turtle” (without “dove”) to refer to the bird still seems to have been current in Shakespeare’s time, long after the Norman conquest.
In Canada, the common term for a federal or provincial electoral district is riding, and in French, comté (the official terms are electoral district, at least federally, and circonscription). Basically, the original electoral districts were indeed the counties, hence the French term.
But as more and more English-speaking settlers moved to what’s now Ontario, they began to agitate for representation by population, so counties with sufficient population were subdivided into smaller electoral districts.
Now, riding is from Old English thriding, “a third part” (compare farthing, “a fourth part, a quarter of a penny”). The county of Yorkshire in England, owing to its large size, was historically divided into three parts, accordingly called thridings, or later ridings; so this came to mean “subdivision of a county.” So this word was transferred to the new electoral divisions that were smaller than a county.
Both *comté *and *riding *stuck long after electoral divisions ceased to have any necessary relation to counties (which are of variable administrative importance today – generally they are substantially less powerful than U.S. counties). But the names still reflect the fact that in French Canada electoral divisions were counties and in English Canada they were smaller than counties.
No, the definition of “folk etymology” is as given. Another example is belfry – it was originally berfrey, but the first syllable was modified by association with the unrelated bell. The term “folk etymology” refers to how the modification arises through the assumption that it must be derived from the transparent “bell” instead of its actual, opaque origins.
Cool! While we’re doing political geographic units, the stan in the “-stans” (Pakistan, Aghanistan…) is from an Old Persian word related to Englisg state – all goes back to an Indo-European root basically meaning “to stand”.
And…the “-pore” in, say, Singapore is cousin to the “-polis” in, for example, Indianapolis. Both refer to a city-sized group of people (one’s Sanskrit, the other Greek).
So the phrase “folk etymology” has now undergone “folk etymology” (as you define it) and achieved a more transparent meaning. And a good thing too.
No, that’s an opposite process. You’re talking about misinterpreting its *meaning *according to its form. Folk etymology is altering the *form *to go with the meaning.
The word “OK” comes from the phrase “oll korrect”, which was a humorous misspelling of “all correct” due to a meme from the first half of the 1800s. This was helped along by Martin Van Buren’s 1840 presidential campaign; being from Kinderhook, NY, he took the nickname Old Kinderhook and used “OK” in his campaign material.
I’m sure this demonstrates that the English language was in dire straits at the time and completely gone by the succeeding decade.
pretty sure this is urban legend/myth/bill-brysonish. do you have a convincing cite?
I like it! Just like when people refer Leonardo da Vinci as simply da Vinci - they really aren’t saying anything.
His name literally means: Leonardo from Venice.
Leonardo makes sense. Leonardo da Vinci makes sense. da Vinci doesn’t.
Huh, I always figured that a “riding” was an area of land which could easily be covered by a man on horseback. You learn something new every day.
My contribution: “Negotiate”, from the Latin “negotium”, for work or business to be conducted. Which in turn comes from “neg”, not, plus “otium”, leisure time. So negotiating is what you’re doing when you’re not relaxing.
Pretty much every reputable etymological dictionary at this point, but Cecil Adams does a pretty good job of it, too.