ilona the pest

insecurity + narcissism = awesome!

Sunday, October 28, 2007

a whole nother word

every time someone criticizes the (perceived) downfall of contemporary english usage, i like to toss them historical examples of the exact same phenomenon they are so snippy about, which was, as i demonstrate, clearly necessary for the creation of the very language they are defending as pristine and untouchable today.

today's example: nother, as in a whole nother, much decried as "not a real word."

some other examples of shamefully fraudulent words, derived in fact from nothing more than the innocent process of juncture loss (or faulty separation) between a and an:

- newt (came from "an ewte")
- nickname (came from "an ekename")
- apron (came from "a napron")
- adder (came from "a naddre")
- umpire (came from "a noumpere")

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home