Misplaced Pages

#970029

40-432: A series of novels about Florida in the 19th century and their Florida cracker characters have been called cracker Westerns . In 1895 Frederic Remington and Owen Wister traveled to Florida to write a story on Florida's cowboys for Harper's Weekly . In the 1990s a series of cracker Westerns by several authors were published. Rough Edges Press published Palmetto Empire by David Hardy in 2014. This novel follows

80-475: A chestnut horse ' . This was an allusion to a fourteenth-century French morality poem, Roman de Fauvel , about a chestnut-coloured horse who corrupts men through duplicity. The phrase was reanalyzed in early Modern English by comparison to favour as early as 1510. Words need not completely disappear before their compounds are reanalyzed. The word shamefaced was originally shamefast . The original meaning of fast 'fixed in place' still exists, as in

120-480: A corn on the foot. The word comes from Old English ang- + nægel ' anguished nail, compressed spike ' , but the spelling and pronunciation were affected by folk etymology in the seventeenth century or earlier. Thereafter, the word came to be used for a tag of skin or torn cuticle near a fingernail or toenail. Several words in Medieval Latin were subject to folk etymology. For example,

160-455: A backdrop for the story. It was depicted as a fictitious stronghold for Spanish gunrunners selling armaments to the Seminole on the west coast of Florida, although it is actually located on the east coast. Films which were made and could be considered Florida Westerns include: Florida cracker Florida crackers were colonial -era British American pioneer settlers in what

200-573: A change in the form or meaning. To disambiguate the usage of the term "folk/popular etymology", Ghil'ad Zuckermann proposes a clear-cut distinction between the derivational-only popular etymology (DOPE) and the generative popular etymology (GPE): the DOPE refers to a popular false etymology involving no neologization , and the GPE refers to neologization generated by a popular false etymology. Examples of words created or changed through folk etymology include

240-606: A group setting. Cracker is documented in William Shakespeare 's King John , Act II, Scene I (1595): "What cracker is this same that deafs our ears / With this abundance of superfluous breath?" By the 1760s, the ruling classes, both in Britain and in the American colonies , applied the term cracker to Scots-Irish , Scottish , and English American settlers of the remote southern back country, as noted in

280-588: A letter to the Earl of Dartmouth : "I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by Crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters ; they are a lawless set of rascalls on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia, who often change their places of abode ." The word was later associated with the cattlemen of Georgia and Florida, many of them descendants of those early colonists who had migrated south. A folk etymology suggests that

320-488: A malevolent savage, filled with a constant bloodlust who fed living prisoners to alligators . One of the advantages of these types of films, however, was that the producers often used the Florida Everglades as a backdrop. Now a contemporary audience has the benefit of glimpsing this wilderness in its mid-20th century form. The producers of Distant Drums even used the historic Castillo de San Marcos fort as

360-480: A manner appropriate to that perceived origin. This popular etymologizing has had a powerful influence on the forms which words take. Examples in English include crayfish or crawfish , which are not historically related to fish but come from Middle English crevis , cognate with French écrevisse . Likewise chaise lounge , from the original French chaise longue ("long chair"), has come to be associated with

400-437: A similar manner include belfry (from berfrey ) by association with bell , female (from femelle ) by male , and penthouse (from apentis ) by house . The variant spelling of licorice as liquorice comes from the supposition that it has something to do with liquid. Anglo-Norman licoris (influenced by licor ' liquor ' ) and Late Latin liquirītia were respelled for similar reasons, though

440-475: A word or other form becomes obsolete, words or phrases containing the obsolete portion may be reanalyzed and changed. Some compound words from Old English were reanalyzed in Middle or Modern English when one of the constituent words fell out of use. Examples include bridegroom from Old English brydguma ' bride-man ' . The word gome ' man ' from Old English guma fell out of use during

SECTION 10

#1732780222971

480-402: A word or phrase resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a more familiar one through popular usage. The form or the meaning of an archaic, foreign, or otherwise unfamiliar word is reinterpreted as resembling more familiar words or morphemes . The term folk etymology is a loan translation from German Volksetymologie , coined by Ernst Förstemann in 1852. Folk etymology

520-496: Is hangmat . It was borrowed from Spanish hamaca (ultimately from Arawak amàca ) and altered by comparison with hangen and mat ' hanging mat ' . German Hängematte shares this folk etymology. Islambol , a folk etymology meaning 'Islam abounding', is one of the names of Istanbul used after the Ottoman conquest of 1453. An example from Persian is the word شطرنج shatranj 'chess', which

560-426: Is a productive process in historical linguistics , language change , and social interaction . Reanalysis of a word's history or original form can affect its spelling, pronunciation, or meaning. This is frequently seen in relation to loanwords or words that have become archaic or obsolete. Folk/popular etymology may also refer to a popular false belief about the etymology of a word or phrase that does not lead to

600-695: Is derived from the Sanskrit चतुरङ्ग chatur-anga ("four-army [game]"; 2nd century BCE), and after losing the u to syncope , became چترنگ chatrang in Middle Persian (6th century CE). Today it is sometimes factorized as sad ' hundred ' + ranj ' worry, mood ' , or ' a hundred worries ' . Some Indonesian feminists discourage usage of the term wanita ('woman') and replacing it with perempuan , since wanita itself has misogynistic roots. First, in Javanese , wanita

640-468: Is now the U.S. state of Florida ; the term is also applied to their descendants, to the present day, and their subculture among white Southerners . The first crackers arrived in 1763 after Spain traded Florida to Great Britain following the latter's victory over France in the Seven Years' War , though much of traditional Florida cracker folk culture dates to the 19th century. The term cracker

680-453: Is uncertain. By the late Middle Ages its meaning was extended to the holder of a university degree inferior to master or doctor. This was later re-spelled baccalaureus , probably reflecting a false derivation from bacca laurea ' laurel berry ' , alluding to the possible laurel crown of a poet or conqueror. In the fourteenth or fifteenth century, French scholars began to spell the verb savoir ' to know ' as sçavoir on

720-462: Is unknown, but presumably humorous, since the dish contains no rabbit. In 1785 Francis Grose suggested in A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue that the dish is "a Welch rare bit", though the word rarebit was not common prior to Grose's dictionary. Both versions of the name are in current use; individuals sometimes express strong opinions concerning which version is correct. When

760-567: The western term cowboy which is often used for those who work cattle is not the common Florida vernacular as is cowman or cowhunter . The Florida "cowhunter" or "cracker cowman" of the 19th and early 20th centuries was distinct from the Spanish vaquero and the Western cowboy . Florida cattlemen's primary tools were dogs and cow whips to herd or capture cattle while also utilizing lassos . Florida cattle and horses were smaller than

800-538: The Cracker Storytelling Festival has been held annually in the fall at Homeland Heritage Park in Homeland, Florida . The year 2013 marked the 25th anniversary of the festival. The Cracker Storytelling Festival includes many storytellers from around Florida who come to share their stories with visitors. The majority of visitors who attend this event are students, because storytelling is part of

840-415: The English dialectal form sparrowgrass , originally from Greek ἀσπάραγος (" asparagus ") remade by analogy to the more familiar words sparrow and grass . When the alteration of an unfamiliar word is limited to a single person, it is known as an eggcorn . The technical term "folk etymology" refers to a change in the form of a word caused by erroneous popular suppositions about its etymology . Until

SECTION 20

#1732780222971

880-459: The Florida educational curriculum. The festival also incorporates local crafts and artwork, food vendors, a whip-cracking contest, and living-history re-enactment of 19th-century homestead life. Folk etymology Folk etymology – also known as (generative) popular etymology , analogical reformation , (morphological) reanalysis and etymological reinterpretation – is a change in

920-403: The academic development of comparative linguistics and description of laws underlying sound changes , the derivation of a word was mostly guess-work. Speculation about the original form of words in turn feeds back into the development of the word and thus becomes a part of a new etymology. Believing a word to have a certain origin, people begin to pronounce, spell, or otherwise use the word in

960-469: The compound becomes obsolete. There are many examples of words borrowed from foreign languages, and subsequently changed by folk etymology. The spelling of many borrowed words reflects folk etymology. For example, andiron borrowed from Old French was variously spelled aundyre or aundiren in Middle English, but was altered by association with iron . Other Old French loans altered in

1000-632: The compounded words steadfast and colorfast , but by itself mainly in frozen expressions such as stuck fast , hold fast , and play fast and loose . The songbird wheatear or white-ear is a back-formation from Middle English whit-ers ' white arse ' , referring to the prominent white rump found in most species. Although both white and arse are common in Modern English, the folk etymology may be euphemism . Reanalysis of archaic or obsolete forms can lead to changes in meaning as well. The original meaning of hangnail referred to

1040-467: The false belief it was derived from Latin scire ' to know ' . In fact it comes from sapere ' to be wise ' . The Italian word liocorno , meaning 'unicorn' derives from 13th-century lunicorno ( lo 'the' + unicorno 'unicorn'). Folk etymology based on lione 'lion' altered the spelling and pronunciation. Dialectal liofante 'elephant' was likewise altered from elefante by association with lione . The Dutch word for ' hammock '

1080-553: The fictional adventures of backwoodsmen, outlaws, and rebels in the era of the First Seminole War . It was during the 1950s that most of these films were produced and many included a fictional and stereotypical portrayal of the real life Seminole leader, Osceola , who resisted American expansion into Florida during the late 1830s. The film Distant Drums (1951), which was one of the earliest Florida Westerns made, even changed his name to Oscala and portrayed him as

1120-477: The letter s is the result of comparison with the synonym isle from Old French and ultimately as a Latinist borrowing of insula , though the Old French and Old English words are not historically related. In a similar way, the spelling of wormwood was likely affected by comparison with wood . The phrase curry favour , meaning to flatter, comes from Middle English curry favel ' groom

1160-454: The name cracker instead derives from the cracking of cattle-drovers' whips. In Florida, those who own or work cattle traditionally have been called cowmen . In the late 1800s, they were often called cow hunters or cowhunters , a reference to seeking out cattle scattered over the wooded rangelands during roundups. At times, the terms cowman and cracker have been used interchangeably because of similarities in their folk culture. However,

1200-444: The name comes from the fact that the trees bloom in spring, a time when circuit-riding preachers resume church services or when funeral services are carried out for people who died during the winter. A seemingly plausible but no less speculative etymology accounts for the form of Welsh rarebit , a dish made of cheese and toasted bread. The earliest known reference to the dish in 1725 called it Welsh rabbit . The origin of that name

1240-411: The orange tree ' , with the initial ⟨n⟩ of naranj understood as part of the article . Rebracketing in the opposite direction saw the Middle English a napron become an apron . In back-formation, a new word is created by removing elements from an existing word that are interpreted as affixes . For example, Italian pronuncia ' pronunciation, accent ' is derived from

Florida Western - Misplaced Pages Continue

1280-402: The sixteenth century and the compound was eventually reanalyzed with the Modern English word groom ' male servant ' . A similar reanalysis caused sandblind , from Old English sāmblind ' half-blind ' with a once-common prefix sām- ' semi- ' , to be respelled as though it is related to sand . The word island derives from Old English igland . The modern spelling with

1320-406: The term Florida cracker is used informally by some Floridians to indicate that their families have lived in the state for many generations. It is considered a source of pride to be descended from "frontier people who did not just live but flourished in a time before air conditioning, mosquito repellent, and screens" according to Florida history writer Dana Ste. Claire. Since the late 20th century,

1360-534: The term an additional meaning of "hopeless venture". Sometimes imaginative stories are created to account for the link between a borrowed word and its popularly assumed sources. The names of the serviceberry , service tree , and related plants, for instance, come from the Latin name sorbus . The plants were called syrfe in Old English, which eventually became service . Fanciful stories suggest that

1400-503: The ultimate origin of all three is Ancient Greek γλυκύρριζα glucúrrhiza ' sweet root ' . Reanalysis of loan words can affect their spelling, pronunciation, or meaning. The word cockroach , for example, was borrowed from Spanish cucaracha but was assimilated to the existing English words cock and roach . The phrase forlorn hope originally meant "storming party, body of skirmishers" from Dutch verloren hoop "lost troop". But confusion with English hope has given

1440-403: The verb pronunciare ' to pronounce, to utter ' and English edit derives from editor . Some cases of back-formation are based on folk etymology. In linguistic change caused by folk etymology, the form of a word changes so that it better matches its popular rationalisation. Typically this happens either to unanalysable foreign words or to compounds where the word underlying one part of

1480-539: The western breeds. The Florida Cracker cattle , also known as the "native" or "scrub" cow, averaged about 600 pounds (270 kg) and had large horns and large feet. Among some Floridians, the term is used as a proud or jocular self-description. Since the huge influx of new residents into Florida in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, from the northern parts of the United States and from Latin America ,

1520-405: The word widerdonum meaning 'reward' was borrowed from Old High German widarlōn ' repayment of a loan ' . The l   →   d alteration is due to confusion with Latin donum ' gift ' . Similarly, the word baceler or bacheler (related to modern English bachelor ) referred to a junior knight. It is attested from the eleventh century, though its ultimate origin

1560-457: The word lounge . Other types of language change caused by reanalysis of the structure of a word include rebracketing and back-formation . In rebracketing, users of the language change, misinterpret, or reinterpret the location of a boundary between words or morphemes . For example, the Old French word orenge ' orange tree ' comes from Arabic النَّرَنْج an-naranj '

1600-716: Was in use during the Elizabethan era to describe braggarts and blowhards. The original root of this is the Middle English word crack , meaning 'entertaining conversation' (which survives as a verb, as in "to crack a joke"); the noun in the Gaelicized spelling craic also retains currency in Ireland and to some extent in Scotland and Northern England , in a sense of 'fun' or 'entertainment' especially in

#970029