ERRONEOUS ORIGINS

Happy accidents: 10 words that originated in mistakes!

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We all make mistakes. That’s why pencils have erasers, right? They are part of what makes us human and have been completely intertwined with our culture and identity since the dawn of history. Like other human endeavors, language flourishes with these mistakes, as they continue to provide instances in which new words and phrases can be formed. And for that, we honor these magnificent blunders by showcasing ten words that emerged from mistakes and mistranslations.

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A chef’s best friend (or maybe yours, if you are cooking a particularly messy recipe), this piece of cooking gear is a must-have in any modern kitchen. "Apron" comes from the old French word napron, meaning "a small piece of cloth". However, once English speakers adopted this term, the phrase a napron eventually derived into an apron through a process linguists call "rebracketing."

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"Decoy" might make us think about spy-thrillers, filled with black cars swerving through busy streets to avoid other inconspicuous black cars, so you might be surprised to learn that this word comes from the world of duck hunting. Decoy comes from a duck-catching structure first developed in the Netherlands in the 13th century. Another case of rebracketing, the English word decoy is derived from the Dutch phrase de Kooi, meaning "the cage". Over time, the word expanded to include several other objects, from fake wooden ducks used by hunters to lure birds, to inflatable or wooden dummy tanks used in WW2.

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In the United States, varsity refers to a school or university’s main athletics team, where the varsity team is composed of the very best athletes an institution can offer. The word itself is a shortening of the word university, and its use can be traced to at least the 19th century: In Arthur Conan Doyle’s "The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter", a rugby player refers to himself as part of the "Rugger team of Cambridge 'Varsity.'"

What’s interesting is wondering why this shortening of university didn’t morph into the more intuitive versity. Perhaps a regional accent influenced this misspelling? No one really knows, but now maybe you can see your old letterman jacket in a new and more mysterious way.

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"Nickname" comes from the 14th-century English word ekename, which literally means "additional name." One century later, a misdivision of the syllables of the phrase an ekename resulted in it morphing into a nekename, an early version of the word nickname. Although its spelling has changed, both the word and the pronunciation of nickname have remained almost the same since the 15th century.

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This is the only word from this list derived from an entire phrase. In 17th century France, the phrase culpable, prest d'averrer nostre bille (guilty, ready to prove our case) was used by prosecutors as an answer to a defendant’s not guilty plea. Apparently, an abbreviation for this phrase used in court records (cul.prit) was mistaken by English speakers as an address to the defendant, and so the modern meaning of the word "culprit" (a person guilty of a crime) was born.

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Umpires are the silent heroes of many sports. From baseball to tennis, umpires confront angry players, coaches, and fans with stern determination and resolve. They truly have no equal. Which is funny, because the origins of this word showcase their uniqueness. Our third case of rebracketing in this list, umpire comes from the French word noumpere, which can be translated to "one without equal" or "odd number" (as a tie-breaker participant). Eventually, the phrase a noumpere became an oumpere, which eventually evolved into "an umpire."

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This one is a bit controversial since there are two possible origins of this word. An ingot is a block of metal, typically oblong in shape, and one of its origins might be traced back to this meaning. According to some linguists, ingot comes from the Old English word geotan, meaning "to pour."Therefore, an ingot would literally refer to the mold on which liquid metal was poured.

However, the second (and frankly, more interesting) possible meaning comes from a mistranslation. The French word for ingot is lingot, derived from the Latin word for "tongue", possibly due to the shape of ingots in Medieval times. Some people believe that English speakers, knowing that the French article le (the) is sometimes contracted to an l’, thought that the word lingot literally meant "the ingot" and decided to remove the L.

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This Northern Europe territory was named Scandinavia or Skandinovia by Late Latin scholars, adding an extra letter to the Germanic word Scadinavia, which might derive from an Old Norse word meaning "south end of Sweden." We might never know if that N was included by mistake or deliberately, but it’s pretty amazing how a single, additional letter determined how an entire region is named.

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The origins of the mighty dollar can be traced back to 16th century Bohemia, where a nobleman known as the Count of Schlick started mining and issuing silver coins of uniform weight and shape known as Schlicken thaler or joachimsthaler. Over time, this word evolved into the German word taler, and then again into daler. Since this form of currency found its way into international markets, by the 16th century the word daler was added to the English vocabulary, where it eventually morphed into the dollar we know now.

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You might be surprised to learn how old this word is. After all, aren’t algorithms the backbone of all modern electronics and technology? While they certainly are, they also date back to the 9th century. The medieval Latin word algorismus comes from the name of a famous Persian mathematician, Muḥammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi. However, the part of his name that evolved into algorithm literally means "from Khwarazm" and refers to the region where he came from. Who would have guessed that a translation mistake would end up naming one of the most repeated terms in the tech world?