Sunday, December 09, 2007

False etymologies, continued

I was reading Heather McHugh's "Broken, as English" (on Tom Phillips's A Humument and the fragments of Archilocus), in which she breaks down "together" as "to-get-her"...I thought of two other false etymologies:

"Bowdlerize" comes from the British practice of censoring translations of the seedy Baudelaire (mispronounced "bowdler").

And...I forgot the other one.

Heather = heat-her? That wasn't it.

A long time ago I wondered if Adam Ant's name was meant to play off the word adamant.

That wasn't it, either.

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Tuesday, December 04, 2007

False etymologies

At the Poetry Foundation, Samantha Hunt talks to Heather McHugh about Vesalius.

I love this question:

I remember once being tempted to read the etymology of “desire” as “from or of the father.” What are some of your favorite false etymologies?

New Dizzyhead challenge?

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