Popular etymologies | Artemis Diary

2023-09-26 13:30:00

When entering into such a controversial topic in the field of linguistics, the first thing would be to start from the meaning of the term etymology (from Latin etymoligĭa and this one from Greek etymology) which, according to Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), is: the origin of words, the reason for their existence, their meaning and their form.

So what would be the popular etymology? The RAE itself says that it is the “spontaneous interpretation that is vulgarly given to a word relating it to another of a different origin”, a circumstance in which the relationship can – or usually – causes semantic changes, as in: “traffic light”> semaphore (it is associated with headlights due to its shape) or “circuit breaker”> short circuit (it is associated with power outages), cases in which an involuntary deformation of a word occurs, as a result of the analogy of meaning with another known word.

That is, popular etymology occurs when the speaker relates two words of different etymological origin by finding semantic proximity. When faced with terms that are strange, the speaker looks for a phonetic, morphological or semantic motivation to justify it. In this sense, borrowings from other languages ​​and cultisms are likely to be affected. This type of phonic-semantic deformations are not infrequently considered vulgarisms, although they can generalize their use and become accepted.

The linguist Tzvetan Todorov, in his Encyclopedic dictionary of the language sciencesstates that “to show the wisdom hidden in the vocabulary, we resort first to etymologies: by adding, deleting or modifying certain letters of an apparently arbitrary name, another name or a series of names that describe the name appear in its place. correctly the thing designated by the initial name (this is not, therefore, a historical investigation, but an effort to discover the truth of the words).”

In this context, the adjective “popular” is not entirely accurate, since its origin dates back to the copyists or scribes of past centuries, although it is common in vulgar language records, and not exclusive to them. For this reason, many linguists prefer the name “associative etymology.”

So there are two cases of popular etymology: 1. The one that maintains the meaning and the word is modified to adjust it to that of another with which a semantic link is established: bolt (assimilated by the common language, whose etymological form verroyo, from verucŭlum ‘closure’, meaning with which it was associated due to its closing function. 2. The one that modifies the meaning, but the word is maintained, the meaning is similar to that of another word that is known and the relationship of origin is established: “inhumar” as incinerate, since it is related to smoke, and the etymology is unknown humus ‘tierra’.

Some examples with a word change: “esparatrapo”> esparadrapo; “atiforrar”> gorge; “gulimia”> bulimia. With change of meaning/word (accepted by the RAE): “vagamundo” >vagabond; “sabihondo”> wiseass. With change of meaning (accepted): “variegate” in the sense of ‘piling up, squeezing’ in the semantic field of the heterogeneous; “high” as ‘culminant, critical’ from ‘very cold’; “livid” as ‘pale’ from ‘bruised’.

Use * Among the popular etymologies considered erroneous, although very widespread, is “carajo” as equivalent to crow’s nest (lookout position on ships).