words origins and their changes

Born by accident: 10 English words that started as mistakes

There are many words we use today that actually came from small "mistakes," like "shamefaced", "penthouse", or the verb "edit." Back then, as words moved between languages and writing wasn’t as common, changes in spelling, pronunciation, or transcription were usual. Sometimes these shifts were unintentional, and other times they were adjusted to sound more familiar with what people thought the word meant. Let’s see these 10 words you probably didn’t know were born as accidents.

The word "shamefaced" looks like it's referring to your face turning red with embarrassment, but that's not actually its first meaning. The original word was shamefast, and that second part, fast, used to mean "held firmly in place." So it wasn't about your face showing how ashamed you were; it was about being held back, or frozen, by shame. Around the 16th and 17th centuries, English people stopped recognizing the old meaning of "fast" and replaced it with "face," which sounded more accurate, but the meaning remained the same.

It may be hard to believe, but the meaning of "penthouse" was originally associated with a small attached structure rather than with luxury apartments. It comes from the French apentis, which referred to a simple construction against a wall, usually with a sloped roof. In the Middle Ages, it was adopted by the English and appeared in forms such as pentis or pentice, already altered in sound.

Time went through, and speakers reshaped it into "penthouse," connecting it to the familiar word "house," even though that link wasn’t originally there. As the form changed, the meaning shifted too. Instead of a modest attached structure, it came to describe a top-floor space, and eventually a high-end apartment at the top of a building.

The verb "edit" didn’t exist as it does now. English already had the noun editor, which came from Latin and meant someone who prepares text for publication. By the late 1700s and early 1800s, English speakers began assuming that if there was an "editor," there should also be a verb "to edit". So they removed what they thought was the "-or" ending and formed a new verb: edit. This is an example of back-formation, where a shorter word is created from a longer one by mistake. Even though "edit" wasn’t the original form, it quickly became standard, and we actually use it more frequently than its original noun.

The Old English word for the snake was nædre. People would say it with the article, like "a nædre." At some point, listeners got confused about where the word actually began and started hearing it as "an adder." So the "n" shifted from the noun to the article, and eventually disappeared from the word itself.

So, it went from "a nædre" to "an adder," and finally to just "adder." This happened in past centuries when language was heard more than written, and people naturally reinterpreted where one word ended, and the next began.

A singular–plural mistake happened with the word "biceps." From Latin, where bi- means "two" and -ceps means "headed". The word is already singular, referring to a muscle with two points of attachment. When it was adopted into English, however, "biceps" was mistaken for a plural form, and "bicep" emerged as a new singular. This is another example of back-formation, when a shorter form is created by removing what people think is a plural ending.

This is a case of misdivision. The fruit has its roots in Asia, and its name travels from Sanskrit, to Persian, to the Arabic naranj. In Spanish, it stayed almost the same; it is called naranja. But in French, naranj came to be norange, and people often said it with the article "une norange". Time passed, and people started to say une orange. When English borrowed the word from French, it adopted this "mistaken version" and has remained orange until today.

After the Norman conquest of 1066, when William the Conqueror of Normandy invaded England and brought French influence to the English language, the English adopted the word cherise from the French (a variant of what today is called in French cerise). As it sounded like the word ended in "s", English thought it was plural and invented the "cherry" as its singular form.

The word "island" didn’t always have an "s" in it. In Old English, it was written as igland or yland, meaning "land surrounded by water." By the 1500s, the spelling started to change. Writers added an "s" because they thought the word was related to "isle," from the word "insula" in French. The "land" part was also kept to make the meaning clearer and avoid confusion with other similar words for water. With time, the spelling "island" became standard. Even though the "s" was added by mistake, it stayed in the word; that’s why we still write it, but never pronounce it.

In early English, sneeze was written as fnese, along with forms like fneosung (sneezing) and fnora (a sneeze). So what happened? In medieval handwriting, there was a long "s" that looked a lot like the letter "f." Because of that, people often misread the word and begin writing it with an "s" instead. That reading mistake stuck and became the standard spelling. Even though the word echoes the sound of a sneeze, its modern form actually comes from writing confusion.

Gravy comes from a French word, grané, which means "spiced". This word was also misread due to medieval handwriting and the similarities between the letters"n" and "u". So, the word came to be misspelled as graue. Today, we use either "u" or "v" depending on the sound they represent, although in medieval times these letters varied according to their position in the whole word. If it was at the beginning of it, the "v" was used, and the "u" if it was in the middle of it. It didn’t matter how it sounded. Because of these changes, grané evolved into gravy as we know it today.

EVEN THE MOST STRANGE NAMES MEAN SOMETHING

What Do The Names Of These 10 Martial Arts Mean?

Image: Uriel Soberanes

The most famous martial arts often have mysterious, exotic names, reminding us of their remote origins. But these disciplines had to start somewhere and their names, while unusual to us, have meanings that are more straightforward than we might believe. Read on to find out what karate, kung fu, or jiu-jitsu means.

Image: Jason Briscoe

One of the most famous martial arts in the whole world, karate’s physical aspects seek the development of defensive and counterattacking body movements. The themes of traditional karate training are fighting and self-defense, though their mental and moral aspects target the overall improvement of the individual.

The word karate is a combination of two Chinese characters (kanji): kara, meaning ‘empty,’ and te, meaning ‘hand;’ thus, karate means "empty hand."

Image: Marc Chong Seng

Taekwondo is a traditional Korean martial art that has become a global sport, gaining an international reputation and standing among the official games in the Olympics.

The term "Taekwondo" is composed of three parts as shown in the English spelling, though it is one word in Korean. Tae means ‘foot,’ ‘leg,’ or ‘to step on;’ Kwon means ‘fist,’ or ‘fight;’ and Do means ‘the way’ or ‘discipline.’

Image: Thao LEE

Kung Fu is a martial art practiced all over the world by people from many different cultures. The term Kung Fu is made up of two characters: the first, Kung, can mean ‘skillful work,’ ‘hard training,’ or ‘endeavor.’ The second, Fu means ‘time spent.’ Together they mean "time spent at skillful work, endeavor, or hard training."

Image: Thao LEE

Sipalki is a Korean martial art with Mongolian roots. It is a fast street self-defense system that uses all body parts including pressure points, grabs, hands and legs counter-attacks, immobilizations, and angles of movement.

The name is the translated expression of the Korean word Sib Fal Gui, which means "the eighteen techniques", referring to the 18 techniques that make up the core of the martial art.

Image: Nathan Dumlao

Krav-Maga is an Israeli self-defense systemknown for its focus on real-world situations. Developed for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), it is derived from a combination of techniques from Aikido, Boxing, Judo, Karate, Wrestling, and other martial arts.

Krav-Maga is a term in Hebrew, composed of two words; Krav, which means 'combat', and Maga, which means 'contact.’ So, the literal translation of the term Krav-Maga is "contact-combat."

Image: Hermes Rivera

Savate is a French kickboxing combat sport that uses the hands and feet as weapons, combining elements of English boxing with kicking techniques. Only foot kicks are allowed, unlike some systems such as Southeast Asian boxing or kickboxing, which allow the use of the knees or shins. However, strikes to any part of the body are permitted.

Savate is a French word for "old shoe or boot". Savate fighters wear specially designed boots. A male practitioner of savate is called a tireur while a female is called a tireuse.

Image: Samuel Castro

A martial art with Soviet origins, Sambo is an internationally practiced combat sport developed and used by the Soviet Red Army in the early 1920s to improve their hand-to-hand combat abilities.

The word sambo is an acronym of samozashchita bez oruzhiya, which literally translates to "self-defense without weapons."

Image: Richard Bustos

Judo is a modern Japanese martial art and combat sport, that first originated in Japan. Its main feature is its competitive aspect, where the objective is to either throw one's opponent to the ground, immobilize or otherwise subdue with a grappling maneuver, or force an opponent to submit by joint locking the elbow or by applying a choke. The word judo means "gentle way".

Image: Nando García

Aikido is a modern Japanese martial art now practiced in around 140 countries. It was originally developed to create an art that practitioners could use to defend themselves while also protecting their attackers from injury.

Aikido is often translated as "the way of unifying (with) life energy" or as "the way of harmonious spirit."

Image: Nolan Kent

The word jiu-jitsu derives from the Japanese Jū meaning ‘gentle’ and Jutsu meaning ‘art.’ Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is a predominantly ground-based martial art, using the principles of leverage, angles, pressure, and timing, as well as knowledge of the human anatomy to achieve a non-violent submission of one’s opponent.