One of my favorite linguistic phenomena isย 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.ย This frequently happens with articles, for example:
apron was originally napron, but โa napronโ was interpreted as โan apronโ
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 โekeโ was an old word meaning โalsoโ or โadditionalโ (so basically โan additional nameโ)
ammunition comes from an obsolete dialectal French amunition, which came from munition, the phrase la munition being heard as lโamunition.
the nickname Ned comes from Ed, via โmine Edโ being heard as โmy Nedโ (in archaic English, โmyโ and โmineโ had the same relationship as โaโ and โanโ), same with several other nicknames like Nell
The word โorangeโ ulimately derives from the Arabic nฤranj, via French โorangeโ, the n being lost via a similar process involving the indefinite article, e.g., something like French โune norangeโ becoming โune orangeโ (itโs unclear which specific Romance language it first happened in)
in the Southern US at least (not sure about elsewhere), โanotherโ is often analyzed as โa notherโ, hence the phrase โa whole notherโ
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 -> lโalemelle)
Related to this, sometimes two words, especially when borrowed into another language, will be taken as one.ย Numerous words were borrowed from Arabic with the definite article al- attached to them.ย Spanish el lagarto became English alligator.ย An interesting twist is admiral, earlier amiral (the d probably got in there from the influence of words like โadministerโ) from Arabic amir al- (lord of the ___), particularly the phrase amir al-bahr, literally โlord of the seaโ.
Sometimes the opposite happens.ย A foreign word will look like two words, or like a word with an affix.ย For example, the Arabic kitaab (book) was borrowed into Swahili as kitabu.ย ki- happens toย be the singular form of one of the Swahili genders, and so it was interpreted as ki-tabu.ย To form the plural of that gender, you replace ki- with vi-, thus, โbooksโ in Swahili is vitabu.ย 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 Frenchย cherise, with the s on the end interpreted as the plural -s.ย Interestingly enough, that word came from Vulgar Latinย ceresia, a feminine singular noun, but originally the plural of the neuter nounย ceresium!ย 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.ย Modern Frenchย once is used for the snow leopard, but originally meant โlynxโ.ย In Old French, it wasย lonce (ultimately from the same source as lynx), which was reinterpreted asย lโonce!ย In English, the word โpeaโ was originally โpeaseโ, but that looked like it had the plural -s on it, and so the word โpeaโ was created from it. ย Likewise, the adjectiveย lone came fromย alone, heard as โa loneโ, but alone itself came originally fromย all one.
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