A word from . . .

An Eke-name for a Noumpere

What do an adder, an apron, and an umpire have in common? Very little, on the face of it, but if we look at the origins of these words we find that all three were formed by a process known as "wrong division".

Adder comes from the Old English word noedre, meaning "serpent". In medieval times the initial n was lost, as a naddre gradually became understood to be "an adder". (Try saying "a naddre" to yourself several times and you'll see how easily this could have come about. At that time, of course, the language was passed on chiefly by word of mouth.)

Similarly, apron comes from the Old French word naperon (from nappe, meaning "tablecloth"). An umpire was once "a noumpere", a Middle English term meaning "arbiter" that was also corrupted by wrong division.

The process sometimes works the other way, resulting in the n of an being added to the noun it precedes. A newt was once "an ewt", and the term "nickname" developed from the Middle English eke-name (meaning "additional name").

It is interesting to speculate about which words may, in the future, be altered by this kind of misinterpretation. Will English speakers of several hundred years' time be sewing with "an eedle", or watching "a neagle" soaring in the sky?

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