Seems like the literature has a pretty good empirical understanding of the divergence of these two words. I wouldn't say "no" possibility, but it seems like an

Seems like the literature has a pretty good empirical understanding of the divergence of these two words. I wouldn't say "no" possibility, but it seems like an interesting lay theory can be true a startling fraction of the time, but to prove its truth probably involves wading through decades of established research from centuries ago. For example, if it's just a corruption, you should expect the two words to rarely occur with different meanings within a corpus. I don't know about the 8th century corpus, but if it happens there, that would be strong evidence against the corruption theory. Also the article mentions in German the two are still separate.