• s_s
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    80
    ·
    2 years ago

    Here’s one for you: “an apron” used to be “a napron”.

    Linguists call this sort of change Rebracketing

      • s_s
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        Napkin and Napron comes from the same french word, which means " small cloth". The french word comes from the Latin “mappa” which is from where we directly get the word “map”.

    • thurmite@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      17
      ·
      2 years ago

      Also “a norange” > “an orange” (in Spanish it’s “naranja”)

      And it went backwards with napkin. “An apkin” > “a napkin”

      • topinambour_rex@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        13
        ·
        2 years ago

        Yes, but no. It was never a norange in english. English directly adopted the word orange from french, so that’s the no, but yes, it was the word naranja from spanish, who took it from arab, and arancia from italian, and maybe from the word gold in french, which is “or”.

        • thurmite@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          12
          ·
          2 years ago

          I’ve never been so delighted to be wrong. Thank you—that’s fascinating.

    • I_Fart_Glitter@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      2 years ago

      As a child I rebracketed two words until I was corrected by spell check as a teen- A stigmatism and an acompilation (complied collection of music or stories).

    • MrBobs
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      2 years ago

      Unbelievable, I find this kind of thing so fascinating. Thanks for posting.