My favorite one is "umpire". The origin of the word is the Old French nonper which means "not even", referring to an extra person arbitrating a match between t

My favorite one is "umpire". The origin of the word is the Old French nonper which means "not even", referring to an extra person arbitrating a match between two "even" teams. The "per" part of "nonper" originated from the Latin "par" meaning "even" which is also the root of the modern English words "parity" and the "par" in "par for the course". "Nonper" then made it's way into Middle English as "noumpere", and "a noumpere" soon became "an oumpere" via re-bracketing. The word pair then evolved into "an oumper", which finally became "an umpire" in modern English.