![]() That is, the easiest explanation (in William of Occam’s sense) may be to say that the word was borrowed and merely continued its overall meaning and pronunciation in an unrevolutionary way. Some of us don’t think that folk etymology is necessary to explain the fate of reindeer. So, is folk etymology applicable to reindeer? The dispute rages on. Also, had the word not been analyzed by native speakers as a compound of rein+deer, it is not unthinkable that the vowels may have become shorter in current English (consider the case of breakfast, etymologically descending from break + fast). It is, thus, not impossible that the preexistence of the word rein in (Middle) English tipped the balance towards the current pronunciation of reindeer over an alternative one like “reendeer”. An orthographic reflection of the same fluctuation can be seen in the different pronunciation of the digraph ‘ei’ in words like ‘receive’ and ‘Keith’ vs ‘vein’ and weight’. Contrast, for example, ‘bait’ and ‘hail’ with ‘bleak’ and ‘weak’ ). Words that contained the diphthong /ei/ in Old Norse do not always appear with the same vowel in English. Since reindeer straightforwardly descends from hreindyri, it may seem that, despite the change in the meaning of the component words, we have no reason to believe that the word was altered by folk etymology at any point. Other Germanic languages have preserved the original meaning ‘animal’ for this word (e.g. However, unlike in English, another way of referring to Rudolf is indeed possible in some of these languages that omits the element ‘deer’ altogether: German Ren, Swedish ren, Icelandic hreinn, etc.Īnother thing that may be relevant is the fact that the word ‘deer’ has narrowed its meaning in English to refer just to a member of the Cervidae family and not to any living creature. German Rentier, Dutch rendier, Danish rensdyr etc.) even though the element ren does not refer to the same thing as in English. The equivalent words in other Germanic languages are often the same (e.g. When one explores the issue further, however, things are not that clear. ![]() This makes the hypothesis of folk etymology plausible. Given that the most prominent role of reindeer in the West is to serve as Santa’s means of transport, an allusion to ‘reins’ is unsurprising. This is something which, in the Christian tradition at least, does make a lot of sense. In present-day English, some native speakers conceive of the word reindeer as composed of two meaningful parts: rein + deer. The word comes ultimately from Old Norse hreindyri, composed of hreinn ‘reindeer’ and dyri ‘animal’. One which has incited heated coffee-time discussion in our department is the word reindeer. A textbook example is the transformation of the word asparagus into sparrowgrass in certain dialects of English.Īlthough clear in theory, it is not easy to decide whether ‘folk etymology’ is called for in other cases. In linguists’ jargon, a ‘folk etymology’ refers to a change that brings a word’s form closer to some easily analyzable meaning.
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