Other interesting rebracketing/juncture loss:
an napron => an apron
a nauger => an auger
a nadder => an adder
And there's probably a bunch more for future centuries [1].
an napron => an apron
a nauger => an auger
a nadder => an adder
And there's probably a bunch more for future centuries [1].
[(xocalia + a'tl) => chocola-tl => chocolate => choco-] + [(al-kuhl => alcohol) + (-ique => -ic) => -holic] => chocoholic
which, having contributions from Nahuatl, Arabic, and Latin results in a word with morphemes originating in 3 distinct language families.
On the topic of article rebracketing, I also love "an eke-name" (an extra name) becoming "a nickname".
I'm not buying this. "eke" as "also" may give the sense "by-name", alright. What irks me is the lack of explanation of the rebracketing, which would appear like a mistake. But "nick of time" and the like would make a reanalysis as "short name" plausible, so not a mistake but a funny play of words.
On hearing the city name "Alexandria" in many places (most notably Egypt), Arabs assumed the start was the Arabic definite article: Al-exandria. In addition, they swapped the "k" and "s" sounds, in an inverse of the African-American Vernacular formation of "aks" from "ask", making the city name "Al-iskandaria". To complete the ridiculous chain, they then back-formed the historical figure's name from the cities named after him: Iskandar.
"Alligator" is from Spanish "el lagarto" ("the lizard").
Tons of terms from Arabic include "al," the Arabic word for "the":
Alchemy, algorithm, algebra, alfalfa, alkaline, alcohol, alcove.
Rebracketing also leads to some interesting affix/root usage:
The root of "cybernetics" is "cybern," but "cyber" is frequently used to form related words.
"Helicopter" comes from "helix" ("spiral") and "pteron" ("wing"), but it is generally split into "heli"/"helo" and "copter" for the formation of related words.
The "per" part of "nonper" originated from the Latin "par" meaning "even" which is also the root of the modern English words "parity" and the "par" in "par for the course".
"Nonper" then made it's way into Middle English as "noumpere", and "a noumpere" soon became "an oumpere" via re-bracketing. The word pair then evolved into "an oumper", which finally became "an umpire" in modern English.