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58-401: The earliest known examples of the word date back to 1780; its etymology is unknown, but it may have originated in student slang. It initially meant an "odd, eccentric person" or a "joke, hoax". Later (perhaps by association with words such as "inquisitive"), it came to mean "to observe, study intently", and thence (from about the mid-19th century) "test, exam." There is a well-known myth about

116-475: 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

174-480: 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,

232-610: A test . This use is typically found in the United States, Canada, the Philippines , Dominican Republic and some colleges in India. For instance, in a mathematics classroom, a quiz may check comprehension of a type of mathematical exercise . Some instructors schedule a daily or weekly quiz ranging from five to thirty relatively easy questions for the purpose of having the students review their previous lessons before attending

290-618: 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 the English dialectal form sparrowgrass , originally from Greek ἀσπάραγος (" asparagus ") remade by analogy to

348-400: A degradation in the quality of a language, especially when the change originates from human error or is a prescriptively discouraged usage. Modern linguistics rejects this concept, since from a scientific point of view such innovations cannot be judged in terms of good or bad. John Lyons notes that "any standard of evaluation applied to language-change must be based upon a recognition of

406-411: A hundred years' time, when the original meaning of 'wicked' has all but been forgotten, people may wonder how it was ever possible for a word meaning 'evil' to change its sense to 'wonderful' so quickly." Sound change —i.e., change in the pronunciation of phonemes —can lead to phonological change (i.e., change in the relationships between phonemes within the structure of a language). For instance, if

464-571: A language or dialect are introduced or altered as a result of influence from another language or dialect; and analogical change , in which the shape or grammatical behavior of a word is altered to more closely resemble that of another word. Language change usually does not occur suddenly, but rather takes place via an extended period of variation , during which new and old linguistic features coexist. All living languages are continually undergoing change. Some commentators use derogatory labels such as "corruption" to suggest that language change constitutes

522-587: A particular type of dog. On the other hand, the word "dog" itself has been broadened from its Old English root 'dogge', the name of a particular breed, to become the general term for all domestic canines. Syntactic change is the evolution of the syntactic structure of a natural language . Over time, syntactic change is the greatest modifier of a particular language. Massive changes – attributable either to creolization or to relexification – may occur both in syntax and in vocabulary. Syntactic change can also be purely language-internal, whether independent within

580-561: A practical tool in all sorts of legal, judicial, administrative and economic affairs throughout the country. Altintas, Can, and Patton (2007) introduce a systematic approach to language change quantification by studying unconsciously used language features in time-separated parallel translations. For this purpose, they use objective style markers such as vocabulary richness and lengths of words, word stems and suffixes, and employ statistical methods to measure their changes over time. Languages perceived to be "higher status" stabilise or spread at

638-483: A sliding window approach, they show that, as time passes, words, in terms of both tokens (in text) and types (in vocabulary), have become longer. They indicate that the increase in word lengths with time can be attributed to the government-initiated language "reform" of the 20th century. This reform aimed at replacing foreign words used in Turkish, especially Arabic- and Persian-based words (since they were in majority when

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696-459: 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 ' the orange tree ' , with the initial ⟨n⟩ of naranj understood as part of

754-475: 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

812-438: 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 a change in the form or meaning. To disambiguate the usage of the term "folk/popular etymology", Ghil'ad Zuckermann proposes

870-496: 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

928-462: Is a "descendant" of its "ancestor" Old English. When multiple languages are all descended from the same ancestor language, as the Romance languages are from Vulgar Latin , they are said to form a language family and be " genetically " related. According to Guy Deutscher , the tricky question is "Why are changes not brought up short and stopped in their tracks? At first sight, there seem to be all

986-423: Is a portmanteau of wani ditata (dare to be controlled), also, wanita is taken from Sanskrit वनिता vanitā (someone desired by men). In Turkey, the political Democrat Party changed its logo in 2007 to a white horse in front of a red background because many voters folk-etymologized its Turkish name Demokrat as demir kırat ' iron white-horse ' . Language change Language change

1044-695: 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

1102-443: Is the process of alteration in the features of a single language , or of languages in general, across a period of time. It is studied in several subfields of linguistics : historical linguistics , sociolinguistics , and evolutionary linguistics . Traditional theories of historical linguistics identify three main types of change: systematic change in the pronunciation of phonemes , or sound change ; borrowing , in which features of

1160-453: 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

1218-462: 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

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1276-587: 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 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,

1334-407: The 1950s and the pronunciation of today. The greater acceptance and fashionability of regional accents in media may also reflect a more democratic, less formal society — compare the widespread adoption of language policies . Can and Patton (2010) provide a quantitative analysis of twentieth-century Turkish literature using forty novels of forty authors. Using weighted least squares regression and

1392-632: 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

1450-404: 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 a manner appropriate to that perceived origin. This popular etymologizing has had a powerful influence on

1508-606: The expense of other languages perceived by their own speakers to be "lower-status". Historical examples are the early Welsh and Lutheran Bible translations, leading to the liturgical languages Welsh and High German thriving today, unlike other Celtic or German variants. For prehistory, Forster and Renfrew (2011) argue that in some cases there is a correlation of language change with intrusive male Y chromosomes but not with female mtDNA. They then speculate that technological innovation (transition from hunting-gathering to agriculture, or from stone to metal tools) or military prowess (as in

1566-467: 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 '

1624-452: 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 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

1682-412: 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 the word lounge . Other types of language change caused by reanalysis of the structure of

1740-477: 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

1798-509: The main (indirect) evidence of how language sounds have changed over the centuries. Poetic devices such as rhyme and rhythm can also provide clues to earlier phonetic and phonological patterns. A principal axiom of historical linguistics, established by the linguists of the Neogrammarian school of thought in the 19th century, is that sound change is said to be "regular"—i.e., a given sound change simultaneously affects all words in which

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1856-418: The meanings of existing words. Basic types of semantic change include: After a word enters a language, its meaning can change as through a shift in the valence of its connotations. As an example, when "villain" entered English it meant 'peasant' or 'farmhand', but acquired the connotation 'low-born' or 'scoundrel', and today only the negative use survives. Thus 'villain' has undergone pejoration . Conversely,

1914-404: 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 the academic development of comparative linguistics and description of laws underlying sound changes ,

1972-444: 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

2030-416: The next class. A "pop quiz" is a quiz that students are given no time to prepare for; they are simply surprised with it in class. Additionally, a personality quiz may be a series of multiple-choice questions about the respondent without right or wrong answers. The responses to these questions are tallied according to a key, and the result purports to reveal some quality of the respondent. This kind of "quiz"

2088-459: The norm." The sociolinguist William Labov recorded the change in pronunciation in a relatively short period in the American resort of Martha's Vineyard and showed how this resulted from social tensions and processes. Even in the relatively short time that broadcast media have recorded their work, one can observe the difference between the pronunciation of the newsreaders of the 1940s and

2146-516: The pronunciation of one phoneme changes to become identical to that of another phoneme, the two original phonemes can merge into a single phoneme, reducing the total number of phonemes the language contains. Determining the exact course of sound change in historical languages can pose difficulties, since the technology of sound recording dates only from the 19th century, and thus sound changes before that time must be inferred from written texts. The orthographical practices of historical writers provide

2204-467: The properties of earlier, un attested languages and hypothesize sound changes that may have taken place in them. The study of lexical changes forms the diachronic portion of the science of onomasiology . The ongoing influx of new words into the English language (for example) helps make it a rich field for investigation into language change, despite the difficulty of defining precisely and accurately

2262-437: The reasons in the world why society should never let the changes through." He sees the reason for tolerating change in the fact that we already are used to " synchronic variation ", to the extent that we are hardly aware of it. For example, when we hear the word "wicked", we automatically interpret it as either "evil" or "wonderful", depending on whether it is uttered by an elderly lady or a teenager. Deutscher speculates that "[i]n

2320-441: The reform was initiated in early 1930s), with newly coined pure Turkish neologisms created by adding suffixes to Turkish word stems (Lewis, 1999). Can and Patton (2010), based on their observations of the change of a specific word use (more specifically in newer works the preference of ama over fakat , both borrowed from Arabic and meaning "but", and their inverse usage correlation is statistically significant), also speculate that

2378-597: The relevant set of phonemes appears, rather than each word's pronunciation changing independently of each other. The degree to which the Neogrammarian hypothesis is an accurate description of how sound change takes place, rather than a useful approximation, is controversial; but it has proven extremely valuable to historical linguistics as a heuristic , and enabled the development of methodologies of comparative reconstruction and internal reconstruction that allow linguists to extrapolate backwards from known languages to

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2436-485: 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 is a productive process in historical linguistics , language change , and social interaction . Reanalysis of

2494-480: The same token, they may tag some words eventually as "archaic" or "obsolete". Standardisation of spelling originated centuries ago. Differences in spelling often catch the eye of a reader of a text from a previous century. The pre-print era had fewer literate people: languages lacked fixed systems of orthography, and the manuscripts that survived often show words spelled according to regional pronunciation and to personal preference. Semantic changes are shifts in

2552-402: 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

2610-404: The subject of the quiz and provide a springboard for a person to explore his or her emotions, beliefs, actions or to put some already acquired knowledge to the test. Folk Etymology Folk etymology – also known as (generative) popular etymology , analogical reformation , (morphological) reanalysis and etymological reinterpretation – is a change in a word or phrase resulting from

2668-450: The syntactic component or the eventual result of phonological or morphological change. The sociolinguist Jennifer Coates, following William Labov, describes linguistic change as occurring in the context of linguistic heterogeneity . She explains that "[l]inguistic change can be said to have taken place when a new linguistic form, used by some sub-group within a speech community, is adopted by other members of that community and accepted as

2726-534: 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

2784-503: 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

2842-527: The various functions a language 'is called upon' to fulfil in the society which uses it". Over a sufficiently long period of time, changes in a language can accumulate to such an extent that it is no longer recognizable as the same language. For instance, modern English is the result of centuries of language change applying to Old English , even though modern English is extremely divergent from Old English in grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. The two may be thought of as distinct languages, but Modern English

2900-415: The vocabulary available to speakers of English. Throughout its history , English has not only borrowed words from other languages but has re-combined and recycled them to create new meanings, whilst losing some old words . Dictionary-writers try to keep track of the changes in languages by recording (and, ideally, dating) the appearance in a language of new words, or of new usages for existing words. By

2958-405: 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

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3016-433: The word quiz that says that in 1791, a Dublin theatre owner named Richard Daly made a bet that he could introduce a word into the language within 24 hours. He then went out and hired a group of street children to write the word "quiz", which was a nonsense word , on walls around the city of Dublin . Within a day, the word was common currency and had acquired a meaning (since no one knew what it meant, everyone thought it

3074-468: The word "wicked" is undergoing amelioration in colloquial contexts, shifting from its original sense of 'evil', to the much more positive one as of 2009 of 'brilliant'. Words' meanings may also change in terms of the breadth of their semantic domain. Narrowing a word limits its alternative meanings, whereas broadening associates new meanings with it. For example, "hound" ( Old English hund ) once referred to any dog, whereas in modern English it denotes only

3132-520: The word length increase can influence the common word choice preferences of authors. Kadochnikov (2016) analyzes the political and economic logic behind the development of the Russian language. Ever since the emergence of the unified Russian state in the 15th and 16th centuries the government played a key role in standardizing the Russian language and developing its prescriptive norms with the fundamental goal of ensuring that it can be efficiently used as

3190-569: Was originally popularized by women's magazines such as Cosmopolitan . They have since become common on the Internet , where the result page typically includes code which can be added to a blog entry to publicize the result. These postings are common on many sites like LiveJournal . The results of online quizzes are generally to be taken lightly, as they do not often reflect the true personality or relationship. They are also rarely psychometrically valid . However, they may occasion reflection on

3248-451: Was some sort of test), and Daly had some extra cash in his pocket. However, there is no evidence to support the story, and the term was already in use before the alleged bet in 1791. Quizzes may be held on a variety of subjects ( general knowledge or 'pot luck' (which could be anything)) or subject-specific. The format of the quiz can also vary. Popularly known competition quizzes include See also: The largest quiz, according to Guinness,

3306-552: Was the "Quiz for Life", held at the Flanders Expo Halls in Ghent, Belgium, on 11 December 2010 with 2,280 participants. The winning team Café De Kastaar from Leuven consisted of Marnix Baes, Erik Derycke , Eric Hemelaers, Bart Permentier and Tom Trogh . In an educational context, a quiz is usually a form of a student assessment, but often has fewer questions of less difficulty and requires less time for completion than

3364-587: Was variously spelled aundyre or aundiren in Middle English, but was altered by association with iron . Other Old French loans altered in 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

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