[Ads-l] ***UNCHECKED*** Re: Antedating of "Folk-Etymology"

[Laurence Horn]

Actually, the true story is somewhat different and more complex. In the old days, there were two warring camps throughout the English-speaking world, one side absolutely convinced that “fuck” was an acronym for the phrase “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge”, the other that it came from “Fornication Under Consent of the King”. Battle lines between the Carnalists and the Consentuals were drawn in every tavern, in every gentlemen’s club, and at every university high table, and unspeakable violence would have certainly broken out, when a brave lexicographer named Jesse (last name has been lost to the ravages of time) demonstrated to the leaders of each group that neither etymology was supported by evidence and that “fuck” was not an acronym at all, at which point the two sides came together and all was forgiven. These two mistaken but historically important theories came to be known as “fuck etymologies”, but for obvious reasons that was changed to “folk etymologies”, by which label similar mistaken derivations have henceforth been called.   

LH

> On Sep 8, 2020, at 12:10 AM, Peter Reitan <pjreitan at HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> Folk etymology folk etymology":
> 
> During the 1820s and 1830s, when parents west of the Cumberland Gap were more commonly referred to as one's "folks," and before the railroads more regularly brought professional entertainers to small, rustic hamlets, it was common for parents to entertain their households on cold winter evenings.  One popular form of entertainment, a precursor to Rudyard Kipling's "Just So Stories", was to fabricate fanciful histories. A subset of such faux histories included elaborate, false, yet plausible word histories; the more believable the better. Since they were created and presented by parents, "folks," they became known as folks' etymologies, later shortened to folk etymology.
> ________________________________
> From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM>
> Sent: Monday, September 7, 2020 12:57:15 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Subject: Re: Antedating of "Folk-Etymology"
> 
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Antedating of "Folk-Etymology"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> The 1874 article ("Slavonic Literary History") is here -- "folk-etymology"
> is indeed given as a calque of German "Volksetymologie":
> 
> https://books.google.com/books?id=3DcNc9AQAAIAAJ&pg=3DPA675
> 
> The German term dates to 1852, from Ernst F=C3=B6rstemann's article "Ueber
> Deutsche volksetymologie."
> 
> --bgz
> 
> 
> On Mon, Sep 7, 2020 at 11:14 AM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> wrote:
> 
>> Nice, Fred.  Out of curiosity, which I assume isn=E2=80=99t solely mine, =
> could you
>> supply enough of the context to clarify the examples the author had in mi=
> nd
>> here?  I seem to recall that =E2=80=9Cfolk(-)etymology=E2=80=9D is a calq=
> ue from the
>> German, but it would still be interesting to know the earliest cited
>> examples of the phenomenon in an English-language context.
>> 
>> LH
>> 
>>> On Sep 7, 2020, at 8:21 AM, Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU> wrote=
> :
>>> 
>>> folk-etymology (OED 1883)
>>> 
>>> 1874 _ Saturday Review_ 21 Nov. 675 (ProQuest)  According to a similar
>> kind of "folk-etymology" many names of places have been wrongly referred =
> to
>> alien sources.
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
> 
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