Good morning or afternoon or evening—whatever time you are reading this email, I hope it is a good time.
My friend Jane G. suggested that it might be interesting to look into false etymologies: what they are and how they occur. What a good idea, I thought, and I decided to include a few examples. Thanks for the suggestion, Jane!
A false etymology is a popular but false belief about the origin of a specific word or phrase. According to Wikipedia, false 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).”
Wikipedia says that this phenomenon happens for a variety of reasons. Some false etymologies are “reasonable interpretations of the evidence that just happen to be false.” Perhaps a scholar attempted to discover the origin of a word or phrase and provided a theory based on the best evidence they had, but it was later found to be incorrect. Over time, as our knowledge grows, sometimes our theories change.
Some false etymologies are more purposefully false or deceptive—or maybe they just come from untrustworthy sources. Someone claiming to be an expert may offer an etymology that is picked up and spread around. And some origin stories just spread like gossip because they’re surprising, intriguing, or scandalous.
Now that you know what they are, let’s look at a partial list of false etymologies from Wikipedia:
| Word or phrase | False etymology |
| butterfly | The word "butterfly" did not originate from "flutterby." It is, as it appears, a compound of "butter" and "fly", first formed in Old English: it comes from the Middle English word butterflye, which in turn comes from the Old English word butorflēoge. |
| emoji | These pictographic characters are often mistakenly believed to be a simplified form of the word emoticon, itself a portmanteau of "emotion icon". However, emoji is a Japanese term composed from "e" (image) and "moji" (character). |
| golf | This word did not originate as an acronym of "gentlemen only, ladies forbidden." The word’s true origin is unknown, but it existed in the Middle Scots period |
| history | This word does not derive from "his story" (that is, a version of the past from which the acts of women and girls are systemically excluded) but from the Greek word ἱστορία, historia, meaning "inquiry.” |
| hiccough | Hiccough, an alternate spelling for hiccup, originates in an assumption that the second syllable was originally cough. The word is in fact onomatopoeic in origin. |
| rule of thumb | This phrase is not derived from a medieval constraint on the thickness of an object with which one might beat one’s wife. More likely it means that the thumb can be used to measure an approximate inch. |
| woman | This word does not originate from "woven from man", nor from "womb." It came from the Old English wifmann ("woman human"), a compound of wif ("woman" – cf. "wife") + man ("human being"). |
There are far more false etymologies than are listed here. Over the years, I’ve learned to be less gullible when it comes to believing the origin of a word or phrase without doing a little research. I believed the false story about the origin of the phrase “rule of thumb” for much of my life. It just sounded so believable. (They often do!)
These days, we have the luxury of numerous search engines that allow us to research and find information. I find myself falling down a lot of interesting rabbit holes while searching for information about language and writing. It’s better than TikTok and Instagram™, if you ask me. By the way, the phrase “down the rabbit hole” originated in Lewis Carroll’s classic book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but I bet you knew that.
Enjoy the rest of your day.
Donna Bradley Burcher |Technical Editor, Advisory | jack henry™
Pronouns she/her/hers
9660 Granite Ridge Drive, San Diego CA 92123
Symitar Documentation Services
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Editor’s Corner keeps your communication skills sharp by providing information on grammar, punctuation, JHA style, and all things English. As editors, we spend our days reading, researching, and revising other people’s writing. We love to spend a few extra minutes to share what we learn with you and keep it fun while we’re doing it.
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