Migrating letters and other curiosities
There鈥檚 an explanation for the origin of the word mall that I鈥檝e seen on social media: It鈥檚 called 鈥渢he mall鈥� because you鈥檙e not going to just one store, you鈥檙e going to 鈥渢hem all.鈥� This etymology is incorrect (we鈥檒l talk about where mall comes from next week), but it is not implausible. It is based on a real linguistic phenomenon: rebracketing or metanalysis, which has produced a number of English words.
Rebracketing occurs when an utterance is broken down and reassembled along the wrong lines. The Twitter etymology of mall provides a good example. It is easy to see how one might mistakenly hear 鈥渢hem all鈥� as 鈥渢he mall.鈥� If people made this mistake often enough, it would produce a new word.
One of the most common kinds of rebracketing occurs when letters migrate between nouns and indefinite articles or pronouns. In the Middle Ages, a nickname was 鈥渁n ekename,鈥� eke being an old word for an addition or an increase. An ekename was thus an addition to your first and last name. When you say 鈥渁n ekename鈥� fast, though, it sounds like 鈥渁 nickname,鈥� and that鈥檚 what the word has been since the 15th century.聽
Ned, Nelly, and Nan were also formed this way. In Medieval and Early Modern English, nouns that began with a vowel took first- and second-person possessive pronouns that ended with the 鈥渘鈥� sound, just as with the indefinite article today. You would say 鈥渕y lady,鈥� for example, but 鈥渕ine egg.鈥� Generations of children thus grew up hearing 鈥渕ine Ed,鈥� 鈥渢hine Ellie,鈥� and 鈥渕ine Anne,鈥� explaining how we got nicknames beginning with 鈥渘鈥� for names that begin with 鈥渆鈥� and 鈥渁.鈥澛�
The transfer can happen in the other direction, from noun to article, as well. The Old English word for snake was 鈥渁 neddre,鈥� which became 鈥渁n adder鈥� in the 15th century. 鈥淎 napron鈥� became 鈥渁n apron鈥� around the same time, and 鈥渁 noumpere鈥� turned into 鈥渁n umpire.鈥澛�
Occasionally rebracketing occurs between languages. The English word orange comes from the Old French pomme d鈥檕renge, which derives from the Arabic na-ranj and ultimately words in Sanskrit and a Dravidian language, all beginning with 鈥渘.鈥� This linguistic history traces the geographic spread of the fruit, which is native to Southeast Asia and came to Europe via Arab Spain, arriving next in France and finally medieval England. Along the way, naranj was rebracketed and the 鈥渘鈥� disappeared in French (orange) and Italian (arancia), but was kept in Spanish (naranja). 聽
Rebracketing slowed with the advent of printing, which fixed words in certain spellings and made their boundaries clear. But perhaps it will be reinvigorated on Twitter and other social media sites, where once again #itshardtotellwhereonewordbeginsandanotherends.
