nor are there any linguistic barriers to this pastime ; the same bird is called perdix in French , and one writer stated that it was thus called because it regularly perdit - loses its brood . even the great are not exempt ; Swift is said to have analysed apothecary as from a pot he carries . but who shall blame them overmuch when we discover that a verb such as atone , with its noun atonement - so obviously Latinate in appearance - is in fact a compound of at and one . children are particularly and naturally prone to this kind of etymologising . continually coming across strange words , they strive to make sense of them in terms of the vocabulary they already possess . there was the child who thought that Wilhelmina was so called because she was mean . a little boy , whose room overlooked a cemetery , was overheard imitating part of the service with his teddy-bear - in the name of the father , the son , and in the hole &apos;e goes . there was a little girl , wise perhaps beyond her years , who interpreted the wedded state as wholly a matter o&apos; money . it is a sobering thought that , although different in degree , some of the etymologies which even our great dictionaries give may be popular etymologies ; for when information about early forms and meanings of words is scarce , we can not always be sure that our etymologies are valid . we still do not know the origin of the word curmudgeon . an early nineteenth century dictionary-maker &apos;s surmise that it is from French coeur m&amp;eacute;chant , wicked heart , is rightly suspect . for the most part , this pastime has no permanent effect on the language , but occasionally , so strong is the desire to make familiar that which is strange , that a word is changed - either in whole or in part - in accordance with the fancied etymology , and the changed form is henceforth accepted . it is a change of this kind which is often specifically intended by the use of the term folk etymology . a good example is a plant , proverbial for its bitter taste , namely wormwood . its Latin name is artemesia absinthium , hence the name absinthe , borrowed from French , for a liqueur distilled from wine and wormwood . few of us would immediately connect this Latin word with another , also taken by us from French , namely vermouth , the aperitif consisting of white wine flavoured with wormwood and other aromatic herbs . both wormwood and vermouth are from the same root , a Germanic word . the French borrowed theirs , with but little adaptation , from the old high German word wermuth , a close relative of which became old English wermod . during the middle ages the latter was altered , the first part to worm and the second to wood . it matters little to the unlettered that neither worms nor wood appear to have anything to do with the plant . the main object , assimilation to that which is familiar , has been achieved . popular etymology shows , in fact , the operation of a widespread and powerful linguistic process , analogy . we learn , recollect , and become adept at using language by analogy , that is by recalling likenesses of meaning , grammatical context , form or sound . we know that cool , coolness , and even cold , are related to each other . it is not surprising , therefore , that our ancestors , knowing that oecern ( modern acorn ) referred to the fruit of the ac oaktree , should assume a connection between the two and believe that -cern should be changed to -corn . in fact , the word oecern is related to oecer a field ( modern acre , which has , however , become specialised in meaning ) , and originally referred to the produce of the fields in general . it is not the observation of likenesses which is at fault in popular etymology , it is the fact that conclusions about the relationships of words , drawn from comparisons , happen to be erroneous . it is not , however , necessary for a whole word to be transformed in order to satisfy the popular etymologist . the amateurs , the unsophisticated , have been less exacting in this respect than learned dilettantes . it is often sufficient for the former that one part of a strange word should be given a comfortingly familiar form , e.g -room in mushroom , from French mousseron , or -fish in crayfish , from French crevice ( like vermouth , a borrowing from old high German , from crebig , related to our crab ) . it is not even necessary that the altered word should be obviously meaningful in English , provided that it fits a familiar pattern ; for example , admiral - by analogy with the many Latin loanwords in English beginning with ad - has been altered from Arabic amiral ( via French ) , which in turn is from amir , prince , lord , more familiar to us in the form Emir . similarly an ending has been transformed in syllable , from French syllabe ( ultimately from Greek ) , by analogy with the many Latin loanwords ending in -able . at this point it may be asked what dictates that one word should be altered and another passed over ? it is not enough to say unfamiliarity and leave it at that ; familiarity and unfamiliarity are relative terms . many of the constituent elements of our vocabulary are terms which we use every day . they are intimately bound up with ordinary existence ; we accept them automatically , without enquiry . we rarely ask ourselves why a house is so called - or a boy or a tree or a bird . as our education and experience grow we accept other words , most of which we fit into a linguistic pattern which we accept as belonging to our language . we go even further and come to regard the patterns which our own language has assumed as somehow normal , and consequently view words entering from a foreign language with grave suspicion . the importance of folk etymology in the development of the language stems largely from the influence it exercises on foreign words when they are first introduced . it is not surprising that a great many of these changes appear to have taken place between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries , a period which saw the assimilation of the spate of French loanwords , the floodtide of Latin loanwords and the beginning of a flow of words from the more exotic languages of the world , either directly into English or via other European countries , which had trading and colonial interests in many parts of the world . English has no monopoly of folk or popular etymology , but the phenomenon appears to have been particularly widespread in our language . our insularity may account for it in part , but there is another possible explanation . our ancestors , like the Germans to-day , had a predilection for compound words ; although many of these disappeared in the course of time , the expectation that the elements of a polysyllabic word could and should be capable of resolution into meaningful elements may have survived . men of learning have also made free with words , particularly those of Latin origin . abominable was from Latin abominabilis , deserving imprecation , which was a compound of ab and omen and referred to the deprecation of an unfavourable omen . from the time of Wycliffe up to the seventeenth century , however , it was spelt abhominable , as if from ab homine , away from man , i.e inhuman . modern scholarship has caused restitution to be made here , but not in the case of arbour , a word which goes back through old French to Latin herbarium , a green retreat . in middle English it was spelt herber , with the h probably already lost in pronunciation in French . by a regular sound change in middle English , -er came to be pronounced -ar . the way was now open for an erroneous association of the word with Latin arbor , a tree . the spelling was first affected , but latterly the meaning also . it is now a shady retreat with climbing plants on a framework of wood - the two ideas have been amalgamated . the mass of the people , unlettered and knowing no language but their own , were also busy in their way , wrestling with the outlandish forms of foreign words , quite oblivious of the fact that the meanings of most foreign words could not possibly be made to yield satisfactory sense on the basis of English roots . but it was generally sufficient that a word be given English dress , even if this was not appropriate . an apposite example is the word farthingale , denoting the framework of hoops used for extending women &apos;s skirts . here is a word which has been subjected twice to the alterations of popular etymologists , both in French and in English . the kernel of the word is Latin viridis , green , which is to be found in Spanish verdugo , a young , pliable green twig ; a framework of such twigs was called a verdugado . borrowed by the French , it became verdugale . it was suggested that it was a safeguard of virtue , as it was impossible to approach the lady except at arm &apos;s length . the French form would become fartugale in middle English as a result of the change of -er to -ar referred to above . but no-one knows what ingenious associations led to the first element being transformed to farthing . many words are thus changed so as to convey a meaning which , however inappropriate , sounds familiarly upon the ear . jerked beef , flesh dried in the sun , is a corruption of Peruvian charqui ; compound , meaning enclosure , is from Malayan kampung ; Charterhouse from French Chartreuse , a Carthusian monastery ; kichshaws from French quelques choses ; battledore , a beetle used for beating washing , is probably from Spanish batidor , a beater . ember days have nothing to do with the ashes of repentance ; the word is from old English ymbren , a compound word formed from ymb , about , around , and ryne , a recurring period . in a fifteenth century homily folk etymology can already be seen at work on this word . standard English is far from having a monopoly of this linguistic phenomenon , which is to be found also in the dialects . a Hampshire farmer had fowls of different breeds , including dorkings ; he discriminated ingeniously between the dark &apos;uns and the white &apos;uns . the bird name fieldfare may go back to an old English form feldfare , deduced from an early twelfth century form feldware ; but the first element may originally have been fealu , denoting the yellowish colour of its back , an element changed in early middle English to felde . but in Cumberland , folk etymology certainly seems to have taken place in its dialect name , fell-faw , which is interpreted as mountain gypsy . more than irony is involved in the colloquial description of a place which many of us have , a glory-hole . the first element of the word is probably related to Scottish glaury , muddy , untidy . in Scotland and northern England a three-legged stool was sometimes known as a creepie , a corruption of French tripied , three feet . this interchange between the sound groups ( tr ) and ( kr ) is not uncommon ; cf English crane , Danish trane , and English huckleberry and hurtleberry . hackberry is a corruption of hag- &amp;sol; heg- berry , i.e hedge berry , a northern name for the bird-cherry , prunus radus . an ingenious rationalisation of hegberry emanated from Cumberland children who explained , we caw them hegberries because they heg ( i.e set on edge ) our teeth . there is the Lancashire corruption barley-men ( also birley- and burley- ) from byrlawmen , the petty officers of the manorial courts in medieval times ; a byrlaw , cognate with our bye-law , was made by a local court . terms for marbles such as all-plaister , yallow-plaister , alablaster and alley blaster are corruptions of alabaster . an interesting expression for a lean-faced person is chittyfaced , a corruption of old French Chichevache ( literally starving cow ) , a medieval monster fabled to devour only patient wives ; being therefore in a chronic state of starvation , it was made a by-word for leanness . it is referred to in the closing stanzas of Chaucer &apos;s clerk &apos;s tale of patient Griselda . it appears later to have been confused with chit , chitty , a young child , a dialect form of kitty , and to have taken on the meaning baby-faced . popular etymology , therefore , can result in change of meaning as well as in change of form , as was also the case with arbour . a delightful adaptation of a Latin word occurs in the Lancashire goose-on-ten-toes , a goose claimed by husbandmen on the 16th Sunday after Trinity , when the collect ended : ac bonis operibus jugiter praestet esse intentos . 