Dictionary

folk-etymological en · ADJ

Meanings

1. Pertaining to folk etymology.
   • Zafarambol (Zafranbolu, Safranbolu). The name has not been explained properly (Ramsay, HG 324, from Θεοδωρίαν πόλιν is impossible; Wittek, Byz. 10 [1935] 40 note 4: from (εἰ)ς Άδριανούπολιν with folketymological transformation is not convincing); […] 1971, Demetrius J[ohn] Georgacas, The Names for the Asia Minor Peninsula and a Register of Surviving Anatolian Pre-Turkish Placenames, Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, →ISBN, page 121:
   • In fact, it would seem that puerca is the folketymological form; […] 1905, Lee Milton Hollander, Prefixal S in Germanic, Together with the Etymologies of Fratze, Schraube, Guter Dinge, Baltimore, Md.: J. H. Furst Company, page 29:
   • In medical terminology, καταμήνια katamḗnia n.pl. 'menstruation' (derived from μήν mḗn 'month') was taken up by Oribasius latinus (6th c.) as cataminia with Middle Fr. catimini; the i of the latter reflected the folketymological influence of catir 'to hide', which also accounted for the semantic shift of the French idiom en catimini 'in secret'. 1981 fall, Henry and Renée Kahane, “Byzantium’s Impact on the West: The Linguistic Evidence”, in Miroslav Marcovich, editor, Illinois Classical Studies, volume VI.2, Scholars Press, →ISSN, page 393:
   • The name [Kuhl] has been altered by folketymological association with the High Ger. word kuhl cool (MHG küele). 2002, Patrick Hanks, Flavia Hodges, A.D. Mills, Adrian Room, The Oxford Names Companion, Oxford University Press, page 357:
   • Their rejection, to a certain extent, of the role of nurturing mothers was symbolized by their searing of their right breasts, a practice justified by folk-etymological derivations of their name from a-privative and mazos, ‘breast’ (although the ostensible purpose of the searing was to facilitate bowmanship, and Amazons are often spoken of as rearing children). 1996, Daniel Ogden, Greek Bastardy in the Classical and Hellenistic Periods (Oxford Classical Monographs), Oxford: Clarendon Press, →ISBN, page 183:
   • Whatever the further ramifications of such a Greek-Iranian term for ‘sieve’ (*pelwi- : plewi-, lost in common usage in Greek), it short-circuits customary Greek root-etymologies, not just such standbys as πολύς/πλείων ‘many’ or πλέος ‘full’ or Lat. pulvis ‘dust’ / Skt. palā́va-, Lith. pelai̇̃ ‘chaff’, but also folketymological connections with πλέω ‘sail’ (implicit in Hesiod, Erga 618-626, where the setting of the Pleiades in late October marks the end of the seafaring season) and πέλεια or πελειάς ‘dove’. 2002, Jaan Puhvel, Epilecta Indoeuropaea: Opuscula Selecta Annis 1978–2001 Excusa Imprimis ad Res Anatolicas Attinentia, Innsbruck, →ISBN, pages 1243 (152) – 1244 (153):
   • As Georges Van Den Abbeele has noted, the OED offers two etymologies: “the more philologically valid formation of the word from com + munis (that is, with the sense of being bound, obligated, or indebted together) and the more folk-etymological combination of com + unus (or what is together as one)” (xi). 1999, Thomas Gill Creel, How Cozening a Word is this Community, Community College Teachers and Democratic Pedagogy: An Ethnographic Inquiry, University of Minnesota, pages 17–18:
   • Those who deny the synchronic relevance of backformation would hold that backforming x from y is simply the folk-etymological assumption that x is the derivational source of y. 2001, Andrew McIntyre, German Double Particles as Preverbs: Morphology and Conceptual Semantics, Stauffenburg-Verlag, →ISBN, page 56:

Forms