Talk:Folk etymology

The Fuck page mentions the "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge" explanations as being 'folk etyomlogies'. But these sorts of explanations don't fit the description on the [[[Folk etymology]] page. It appears that the definition here needs to be broader.

It's rather a backronym. Ausir 10:48, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

There's a popular misunderstanding of 'folk etymology' to mean "an etymology that is well-known but unsubstantiated", or at least something approximating that; that's what happened on Fuck. This article describes what linguists mean by the term; I'm hesitant to describe what some people erroneously think it means. Best they arrive and find out what it is than arrive and find out what it isn't. I came to folk etymology now to make sure it wasn't that, as a matter of fact! Perhaps instead I'll set about finding the things that link here but shouldn't. — mendel ☎ 01:32, Nov 5, 2004 (UTC)

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Contents

1 More on folk vs fake etymology 1 Still more on folk/fake etymology 2 Merge Request 3 Merge request revived

More on folk vs fake etymology

I'm trying to make this terminology consistent wikipedia-wide, so I want to put a bit more emphasis here: A folk etymology is a correct explanation of a word or phrase's history; if it's popular but incorrect, it's fake or popular (which is a redirect to fake here).

<s>Writing something like "an incorrect folk etymology" should be a red flag that something is wrong. A folk etymology which is incorrect needs to not only be incorrect but also reference an incorrect etymology. But at that point it's probably better to emphasize that the etymology being talked about is wrong, and not get into details about what linguistic labels would apply to the wrong etymology were it correct. — mendel ☎ 02:35, Nov 5, 2004 (UTC)

Ignore all that and read below instead! — mendel ☎ 15:56, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

Still more on folk/fake etymology

I didn't do a great job of making the folk/fake distinction first time around, and a couple of people have pointed that out on my talk page, and I've replied on theirs, and so on, the end result being quite a bit of discussion on the distinction that is on various people's talk pages. To remedy that, I'm pulling out bits from a few of my replies here, so that discussion on the distinction can happen here instead of all over!

Having dug into this further, here's the key distinction, regardless of what I said above:

A fake etymology is an inaccurate account of the history of a word or phrase.

Folk etymology is the process in which a word or phrase's meaning changes because a fake etymology is widely believed to be correct.

Just so you don't think I'm making this all up, here's MWCD13's entry for "folk etymology":

the transformation of words so as to give them an apparent relationship to other better-known or better-understood words (as in the change of Spanish cucaracha to English cockroach)

OED2 doesn't give it a separate entry, but in this usage note in folk the gist is still there:

the popular perversion of the form of words in order to render it apparently significant

Columbia (http://www.bartleby.com/68/73/2573.html) is a bit more liberal, but still clear:

the name given both the processes and their results when, either deliberately or inadvertently, words or meanings are changed to match an incorrect origin.

I personally don't like the "and their results" part (that takes us back to "a folk etymology" again, which is just asking for further confusion), but it's clear there that there has to be a change for folk etymology to occur.

A couple more online references:

• Folk Etymology and Borrowing (http://babel.uoregon.edu/romance/rl407/borrowing/borrowing.html) from the U Oregon Department of Romance Languages
• Folk etymology vs. back-formation (http://www.linguistlist.org/~ask-ling/archive-most-recent/msg04723.html) on linguistlist
• This linguistlist post (http://linguistlist.org/issues/5/5-1232.html) indicates that the process sense of "folk etymology" is still dominant and its usage as a synonym for "fake etymology" is rare within the discipline

I think the reason it gets confusing is that the two terms resemble each other so closely — but they're really using "etymology" in two different senses. In "fake etymology", "etymology" means "an account of the history of a word or phrase"; in "folk etymology", "etymology" means "the way a word or phrase developed over time". To compare that to non-linguistic history, the former is like a book about how a war was won, while the latter was the actual winning of the war.

In other words, to say "cater-corner" refers to the way cats walk is a fake etymology, because, well, it's not true. But to say "kitty-corner" developed from "cater-corner" because many believed "cater-corner" to refer to the way cats walk is a description of an instance where the process called "folk etymology" occurred.

Folk etymology is something that happens to a word or phrase, and the end result is a modification; a fake etymology is a particular description of what happened to a word or phrase, where that description is incorrect but popularly held.

So, to determine whether folk etymology is involved, the first question to ask is "Did the word change?". If there was no change then there was no process by which the change occurred, so it's not folk etymology at work.

On the other hand, if there was change, then the question to ask is "Was the change based on an inaccurate understanding of the history of the word prior to the change?" If it was, then what happened was folk etymology.

As for popular etymology, I'm really not sure. I see references that use it in the "popularly-held belief" sense, and references that use it in the "folk-etymology process" sense. Perhaps it ought to just be avoided outright? — mendel ☎ 15:39, Nov 19, 2004 (UTC)

Merge Request

Despite the above, a request was entered to merge Fake into Folk etymology. I have removed the request-- the above reasoning is self-explanatory. Mwanner 21:24, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)

I put up said request. I am guess I should have verified the Talk page first. I am still not convinced of the need for two pages. It appears that folk etymology is the result fake etymology, but not all fake etymology will result in folk etymology. And the words are quite commonly mixed up.

This passage describing popular usage of folk etymology:

In popular usage, the term has also come to mean an "explanation" of the meaning of a word based on its superficial similarity to other words

Seems to be exactly the same as a fake etymology.

While at fake etymology you find:

While "folk etymology" is occasionally encountered as a synonym for "fake etymology

This is all very confusing. And if the pages are not merged, a better (and consistent) clarification needs to be placed on both pages.

--ZayZayEM 08:31, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

it will be even more confusing if the pages are merged. The concepts overlap, but neither is a subset of the other. If a fake etymology evolves into a folk etymology, it will cease to be a fake etymology. So, yes, the articles should be clarified, but no, I do not think merging them will be helpful at this point. dab (ᛏ) 08:42, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Merge request revived

This IS confusing, and I would support the merge request, because I think the distinction pursued here is not convincing. The article on fake etymology contains the sentence "While "folk etymology" is occasionally encountered as a synonym for "fake etymology", that usage is rare amongst linguists." However, no source is given for this. I doubt very much that most linguists make this distinction; I suspect this distinction is just a cool idea of one Wikipedian, though it may possibly be an ideocyncracy of some rogue linguist, but that will be all. My reason for this (apart from the fact that as a professional linguist I have never encountered it) is that the term "folk etymology" does not sensibly describe the process it is purported to describe. "Etymology" relates to the pre-history; the change in the form RESULTS from the etymology, it is not itself an etymology, neither a folk one nor any other kind. Nor does it does make sense to say that a false etymology ceases to be one when it has consequences for the form: the false etymology is the popular story about the word, and that story remains the same whether it causes change in the word or not. I CAN imagine a linguist saying, as a kind of shorthand, "the form xxx changed to xxy by folk etymology", but he means that the etymology triggered the change, not that the change IS the etymology.

I personally would have used the terms like this:

• false or erroneous etymology - an error, especially a hypothetical proposition by a linguist which later turns out to be wrong.
• folk or popular etymology - a false etymology which grew up in the oral tradition of a people; just as a folk song is distinguished from other songs by the fact that no-one "wrote" it in the modern sense. The story of "Ape mountain" in the article (a great anecdote) is to me not "folk" or "popular" because it was just one guy's error, and the "people" never adopted it as their lore.
• fake etymology - a false etymology which someone made up deliberately, knowing it was false: "faking" implies deceit, or at least cunning. I would use "fake etymology" to describe sensational pseudo-etymologies invented by advertisers, for example.
• pseudo-etymology - a good general term for all of the above. If we do merge the articles, that would be the best title for the composite one, and all the other terms would then be redirects.
• I don't know a set term for the phenomenon of folk etymology causing change, though it is very common and deserves to have a term. "Folk etymological analogy" strikes me as a good possibility. At any rate, the change ITSELF cannot be called "folk etymology" - that term can only describe the force which drives the change.

Now I know that off-hand I can't give authoritative references for that, or at least not for all of it, (though the German Wiki's article de:etymologie, defines "Volksetymologie" the way I would define "folk etymology"), but the fact remains that the words "false", "erroneous", "folk", "popular" and "fake" all have meanings, and their application to etymologies have to have some kind of logic. So since none of you have provided authoritative sources and your usages are less logical than mine, I would say they are in question. So the ball's in your court - prove what you're saying or else merge the articles. This would be great as a single article: it could start by talking about different kinds of etymological misconception (scholarly, popular, sensational) and go on to show how the popular ones sometimes result in changes in the form of the words. Hangs together beautifully. --Doric Loon 18:45, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

As there has been no response to my comments of 8 May, can I take it you are all happy for me to move this article to Pseudo-Etymology, incorporate the material from "Fake etymology" and make both "Fake etymology" and "Folk etymology" into redirects? If not, you'd better say so. Silence is my mandate to go ahead. --Doric Loon 19:42, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Don't. Maybe move "Fake etymology" to "Pseudo-etymology"; or better yet (since "pseudo-etymology" is a made-up term nobody uses), make "fake etymology" merely a subsection of Etymology - that is, a section dealing with widely-believed false explanations of word histories. "Folk etymology" is an established and widely-used technical term for a mode of linguistic change; it has nothing to do with false etymologies like "Fuck comes from for unlawful carnal knowledge". There is confusion enough already; there is no need to add to it by combining two unrelated phenomena in one article with an invented title. AJD 20:52, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

'Pseudo-etymology' isn't made up. Although it doesn't warrant an entry in the OED, if you do a full-text search, you'll get 7 hits, compared to 21 for 'false etymology' and 99 for 'folk-etymology'. ('Fake etymology' gets 0 hits.) They appear to be completely synonymous in OED useage. Here are some examples:

At a later period the Fr. aloyer and n. aloi, in reference to metals, were explained by false etymology from à loi (reduced) to law, or to legal standard.

The foot soldiers had it fixed on a long pole, whence the name *Pole-hammer. [This is an error, founded on false etymology; the poll-hammer (M.Du. pol-hamer) had its name from poll head, like poll-ax, POLE-AXE.]

taffrail [A 19th c. alteration of TAFFEREL, due to false etymology, the termination -rel being taken as RAIL.]

hoggaster [med.L. hogaster, dim. from Eng. hog; also in AFr. form hogastre. The forms hogsteer, etc., appear to be due to false etymology.]

agnail [A word of which the application (and perhaps the form) has been much perverted by pseudo-etymology.

shaffron [Possibly shafferoon may be the correct form, and the form chaperon, -oon may be due to pseudo-etymology.]

lagan [The spelling ligan seems to be due to pseudo-etymology.]

balti [It is widely suggested that the word is derived < Hindi bālţī pail, bucket (perh. ult. < Portuguese balde), referring to the small, two-handled pan used in balti houses (Urdu karahi), but this is probably a folk etymology.

marasca [It is unclear whether the first element of Italian marasca is < amaro bitter (< classical Latin am{amac}rus: see AMARITUDE n.) with aphesis, or whether the (late attested) form amarasca shows only the influence of a folk etymology.

matchcoat [< Virginia Algonquian matchkore deerskin robe < Proto-Algonquian *mat- (empty root) + *-ixto{theta}- robe, blanket. The oldest recorded form matchcore (see quot. 1612) reflects the etymon; the predominant later form shows assimilation of the final syllable to COAT n. by folk etymology.

That is, all of these terms are used to mean both an incorrect attempt at tracing the history of a word, and also the modification of a word to better fit its supposed provenance. If we use the concepts as ambiguously as the OED, then I suggest that we choose the term in common use, folk-etymology. This is the term that people understand, and the one they're most likely to look up. If we decide to disambiguate, then I suggest using the transparently intuitive term false etymology in the literal sense of and incorrect history of a word, and the commonplace folk-etymology for the motivation in modifying such a word. I don't feel that the terms pseudo-etymology or fake etymology are helpful. —kwami 02:50, 2005 Jun 15 (UTC)

I basically agree with your conclusion: keep Folk etymology for the linguistic-change process commonly referred to by that name, and use "false etymology" for incorrect explanations of word histories. (Note, by the way, that folk etymology doesn't typically involve an explicit false etymology as such anywhere in the process.) However, I don't think it's probably necessary to give "false etymology" its own article; it might better be suited just to be a subsection of the Etymology article.