What is this an example of: a napron becomes an apron? An apron comes from misdivision of a napron This incorrect division can work in other ways Other examples include newt (an ewte), nickname (a nekename, from an ekename), naught (from an aught), nuncle (archaic; from division of mine uncle as my nuncle, and an uncle as a nuncle Similarly for archaic naunt), the adder snake (a nædder)
early modern english - Does tis means this is or it is . . . It is basically just a neuter version of a napron, a nadder, a norange, etc The fact that the definite article has in some dialects become t’ has led to people reinterpreting tother as t’other = the other; but that’s a later folk etymology –
etymology - When did the a an distinction happen? - English Language . . . For example, a newt was once “an ewt“ (earlier euft and eft), a nickname was once “an eke-name”, where eke means "extra" (as in eke out meaning "add to"), and in the other direction, “a napron” (meaning a little tablecloth, related to the word napkin) became an apron, and “a naddre” became an adder
grammaticality - Is a whole nother grammatical? - English Language . . . The opposite split is on display in the case of "an unwashed apron": napron arrived in Middle English from the Middle French word naperon, a diminutive of nape (cloth), according to Merriam-Webster's Eleventh Collegiate Dictionary (2003)
An Ewt to A Newt? - English Language Usage Stack Exchange It’s called metanalysis or rebracketing, amongst many other things: Rebracketing (also known as juncture loss, junctural metanalysis, false splitting, false separation, faulty separation, misdivision, or refactorization) is a process in historical linguistics where a word originally derived from one source is broken down or bracketed into a different set of factors
Whats it called when a word that starts with a vowel takes the n . . . OED answers this question at newt: Variant of eft n 1 (see forms at that entry) with metanalysis (see N n From the beginning of the Middle English period, the coexistence of two forms of the indefinite article (an before vowels and a before consonants) often led to metanalysis (a similar phenomenon occurs in other languages where the indefinite article ends in -n, e g Dutch, German, French
Why did the letter “o” disappear in the word “pronunciation”? There is also the ounce that means lynx, but that word traces a slightly different route between Latin and English, having confused the leading l-for an article and therefore losing it, much as a napron became an apron over a confusion about articles, just as occurred with an orange which originally had a leading n-in the noun