Came across a cool type of etymology today: wrong division (sometimes called “misdivison”). I stumbled upon it looking up the definition of “nonce.” Dictionary.app told me the following:
ORIGIN Middle English : from then anes [the one (purpose)] (from then, obsolete oblique form of the + ane [one] + -s 3 ), altered by misdivision; compare with newt and nickname .
Not easy to parse, but looking at “newt” told me that it, too, was formed by wrong division. Newts used to be called “ewts,” and when someone wrote “an ewt,” a boo-boo was made when someone re-read or heard it and it became “a newt.” (This also explains why efts grow up to be (n)ewts.)
But misdivision works both ways—there are another breed of words that lost letters, like “apron.” That’s right, they used to be called “naprons,” but “a napron” mutated into “an apron.”
Someone seems to have compiled a pretty comprehensive list. I think my favorite is “nuncle,” which means “a person’s uncle,” but was created by misdividing “mine uncle.”
