Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1993, Page 109

Learned & Popular Etymology
107
are popular. In (4) the association with the Latin word equus points
to some knowledge of Latin, and the accentuation is stated to be a
lexicographical mistake; while (5) clearly implies that the uneducated
speakers of non-standard dialects retain the “true”, “uncontaminated”
forms pickis etc. To retum to an earlier example, Bloomfield’s sand-
blind is a leamed spelling of the etymologically normal spoken form,
as are a host of other spellings such as island and doubt, where the s and
the b are introduced as a result of leamed misconceptions. In point of
fact any “erroneous” etymological association is by definition leamed,
since the unleamed speaker does not make etymological associations.
Of course there are also clear examples of word play which seem
more likely to have popular than leamed origins. But in fact this can
never be more than conjecture, since we cannot draw the conclusion that
leamed minds are not at work whatever the social register of the lexical
items concemed. A fairly typical example is that of the Sussex dialect
word festival ‘flute’ (Parish 1957:40), which ultimately derives from
the Latin fistula ‘pipe, water-pipe, flute, ulcer’. Its progress towards
homonymy with the standard English festival is clearly a complex
one involving the Old French form festre, with -re for -le (whence
standard English/eítór) and other French or English forms derived from
the Latin adjectives festus, fesiivus and the Medieval Latin festivalis.
Thus while it is correct to say that the Sussex word is the result of
associations of etymologically unconnected forms, there is no clear
evidence to suggest misassociation as a result of misunderstanding and
error. Misunderstanding is of course not to be mled out, but there is an
undeniable hint of leaming in the associations made: the retention of
the final / instead of the French -re seems to point to an understanding
of the connection with the Latin medical term fistula.
5. Neologisms
5.7 Paronomasia and “facetiousness”
Rather than ignorant misrepresentation, I suggest that, in many cases
at least, we are dealing with some sort of intentional paronomasia, and
the question as to whether leamed or unleamed minds are at work is a