The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language

Folk Etymology

The addition of the H to umble is an example of what’s known as folk etymology. Somebody who didn’t know what an umble was saw the words umble pie and got confused. Then they saw that umble pie was a humble dish, assumed that somebody had just missed off the H, and decided to put it back. Thus umble pie becomes humble pie. That’s folk etymology.

A duckling is a little duck and a gosling is a little goose and a darling is a little dear, and on the same principle a little fellow who stood at an important chap’s side used to be known as a sideling.

Then the origin of the word sideling was forgotten and in the seventeenth century people decided that it must be the participle of a verb, just as leaping and sleeping are participles of leap and sleep. There was only one problem with this theory: there didn’t seem to be a verb to fit the noun. So one was invented and from then on a sideling became somebody who sidled. These days there aren’t nearly as many lords and servant boys and so sideling itself has vanished. People still sidle around and sidle up to each other, but they are able to do so only because of a mistake of folk etymology and the backformation of a new word.

Another common form of folk etymology happens when people alter the spelling of strange or unfamiliar words so that they appear to make more sense. For example, there’s a drowsy little rodent that the French therefore used to call a dormeuse, which meant she who sleeps. In English we call the same creature a dormouse. That’s despite the fact that it isn’t a mouse and has no particular affinity for doors. The reason is that the English had field mice and town mice and so they were, of course, going to look at the word dormeuse and conclude that someone just didn’t know how to spell.

The same principle applies to fairies, or rather to the disappearance of fairies. Once upon a time, belief in fairies was commonplace. They lived not at the bottom of the garden, but in the woods, where they would play all sorts of mysterious games. They would milk people’s cattle in the night, or hide in flowers and under trees, and generally do the sorts of things that would get you or me arrested. They were known as the Folks. When it was cold the Folks liked to wear gloves, which is why there is, or used to be, a flower called a folks’ glove.

But the fairies have all died (or maybe just got better at hiding) and people stopped referring to them as Folks many years ago, which is why the name folks’ glove became rather peculiar. Then some clever fellow decided that they weren’t folks’ gloves after all, they must be fox-gloves because foxes have such dinky little feet, and the error set in. They are foxgloves now, and foxgloves they will remain, until somebody makes a better mistake.

By the same system, the old word crevis is now spelled and pronounced crayfish, even though it’s not very fishlike. The Spanish cucaracha became a cockroach, and most wonderfully of all, the Indian mangus became a mongoose, although there’s not a huge similarity between the furry, snake-devouring mammal and a goose.

An exception to these folk etymologies is the butterfly. Butterflies do have something to do with butter, although nobody is quite sure what. They like to flutter around milk pails and butter churns, which might explain it. Many butterflies are yellow, which would be a good reason for the name. But there’s another, more troubling possibility: butterflies, like the rest of us, are subject to the call of the lavatory, and butterfly poo is yellow, just like butter.

Now, you may ask yourself, what sort of person goes around peering at butterfly poo and then naming an insect after it? The answer, it would appear, is that Dutch people do that. Or at least, an old Dutch word for butterfly was boterschijte.

Of course, you may dismiss that last theory as poppycock, but if you do, please remember that poppycock comes from the Dutch pappe-cack, meaning soft shit.

Before the next link, can you guess what butterflies have to do with psychiatry and pasta?