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A surprising number of words arise from a process called “misdivision”. In this case, “-gate” was coopted as a generic suffix for scandals, in the same way that
by evincarofautumn 10y ago
A surprising number of words arise from a process called “misdivision”. In this case, “-gate” was coopted as a generic suffix for scandals, in the same way that “-burger” is a generic suffix for certain types of hot sandwich, even though the name comes from Hamburg+er, not ham+burger.
Off the top of my head: “a napkin” used to be “an apkin”, “a lute” used to be “al ’ud” (“the lute”, in Arabic); “an orange” used to be “a norange”, and moreover, the colour is named after the fruit—we used to call the colour “yellowred” (geoluread, in Old English).
Language evolves in messy and illogical ways.
- thanatropism 10y agoso how does the orange Prince of Orange fit on this tale?
- ricree 10y agoIt has a separate etymology, but pronunciation seems to have been altered by the fruit/color into its modern form. The color was adopted later on after the two terms merged.
- _acme 10y agoFrom Wikipedia: Note that juncture loss may have occurred in a different language before a word reached English; for example, orange did not develop in English from *a norange, but rather the juncture loss occurred in Old French and Anglo-Norman orenge, or possibly in Italian.
- evincarofautumn 10y agoAh, thank you. I had my history mixed up. Still a decent example, though—and curiously it didn’t happen with Spanish naranja.
- 0xcde4c3db 10y agoA similar example is the "-caine" suffix on local anesthetics. This comes from their similarity to co+caine, but cocaine came from coca+ine, being a coca extract.
- blastrat 10y ago| “a napkin” used to be “an apkin” <-- I don't think so I think you are thinking of "a napron" became "an apron" another good one is pease sounded like a plural so pease soup became pea soup. Pease porridge hot, anyone?
- evincarofautumn 10y agoThanks! I should really verify these things before trusting my memory. Napkin and apron are derived from the same root, but it’s not immediately obvious because one of them suffered misdivision (and I had apparently forgotten which one).