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“A whole nother” way of looking at things
I recently learned that the word apron was once apparently napron, but the current form has resulted from accidental morphing of a napron to an apron. What is this kind of mistake called? (I'd also like to know of others, if there are any.)
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).
Some also include orange, but the N was dropped before the word entered English, in French une orenge from une norenge.
Daffodil comes from the earlier affodell, a variant of asphodel. It's thought the D comes from the Dutch de affodil.
This also happens with names, such as Ned (my Ned from mine Ed) and Nellie (my Nellie from mine Ellie).
Wikipedia has many more examples in several languages and gives other names for the process:
Rebracketing (also known as juncture loss, junctural metanalysis, false splitting, false separation, faulty separation, misdivision, or refactorization) is a common process in historical linguistics where a word originally derived from one source is broken down or bracketed into a different set of factors. It is a form of folk etymology, where the new factors may appear meaningful (e.g., hamburger taken to mean a burger with ham), or may seem to be the result of valid morphological processes.
Etymonline.com calls it a faulty separation. Some others are adder, umpire, orange, newt, nickname, uncle (erroneously moving the letter "n" to the article "a=an", or noun "ewte=newt".
As @Brett points out, Danish linguist Otto Jespersen (1860-1943) coined the term metanalysis for this process. But there's still debate over whether, for example, deriving the verb to peddle from the noun pedlar is a form of metanalysis, or of back-formation.
I believe Jespersen called it metanalysis.
