One of my favorite linguistic phenomena isĀ rebracketing, which is when a word or words is/are redivided differently, either two words becoming one, one word heard as two, or part of one word interpreted as part of the other.Ā This frequently happens with articles, for example:
apron was originally napron, but āa napronā was interpreted as āan apronā
newt comes from ewt by the same process
In the opposite direction, nickname comes from Middle English nekename which in turn came from ekename (an ekename -> a nekename) where āekeā was an old word meaning āalsoā or āadditionalā (so basically āan additional nameā)
ammunition comes from an obsolete dialectal French amunition, which came from munition, the phrase la munition being heard as lāamunition.
the nickname Ned comes from Ed, via āmine Edā being heard as āmy Nedā (in archaic English, āmyā and āmineā had the same relationship as āaā and āanā), same with several other nicknames like Nell
The word āorangeā ulimately derives from the Arabic nÄranj, via French āorangeā, the n being lost via a similar process involving the indefinite article, e.g., something like French āune norangeā becoming āune orangeā (itās unclear which specific Romance language it first happened in)
in the Southern US at least (not sure about elsewhere), āanotherā is often analyzed as āa notherā, hence the phrase āa whole notherā
omelet has a whole series of interesting changes; it comes from French omelette, earlier alemette (swapping around the /l/ and /m/), from alemelle from an earlier lemelle (la lemelle -> lāalemelle)
Related to this, sometimes two words, especially when borrowed into another language, will be taken as one.Ā Numerous words were borrowed from Arabic with the definite article al- attached to them.Ā Spanish el lagarto became English alligator.Ā An interesting twist is admiral, earlier amiral (the d probably got in there from the influence of words like āadministerā) from Arabic amir al- (lord of the ___), particularly the phrase amir al-bahr, literally ālord of the seaā.
Sometimes the opposite happens.Ā A foreign word will look like two words, or like a word with an affix.Ā For example, the Arabic kitaab (book) was borrowed into Swahili as kitabu.Ā ki- happens toĀ be the singular form of one of the Swahili genders, and so it was interpreted as ki-tabu.Ā To form the plural of that gender, you replace ki- with vi-, thus, ābooksā in Swahili is vitabu.Ā The Greek name Alexander became, in Arabic, Iskander, with the initial al- heard as the article al-.
Similarly, the English word Cherry came from Old Norman FrenchĀ cherise, with the s on the end interpreted as the plural -s.Ā Interestingly enough, that word came from Vulgar LatinĀ ceresia, a feminine singular noun, but originally the plural of the neuter nounĀ ceresium!Ā So a Latin plural was reinterpreted as a singular in Vulgar Latin, which in turn was interpreted as a plural when borrowed into English!
The English suffix -burger used with various foods (e.g., cheeseburger, or more informally chickenburger, etc.) was misanlyzed from Hamburger as Ham-burger, itself from the city of Hamburg
This can happen even with native words.Ā Modern FrenchĀ once is used for the snow leopard, but originally meant ālynxā.Ā In Old French, it wasĀ lonce (ultimately from the same source as lynx), which was reinterpreted asĀ lāonce!Ā In English, the word āpeaā was originally āpeaseā, but that looked like it had the plural -s on it, and so the word āpeaā was created from it. Ā Likewise, the adjectiveĀ lone came fromĀ alone, heard as āa loneā, but alone itself came originally fromĀ all one.
