False etymology

Abstract: Popular etymology - also called false etymology - has often been considered as a marginal phenomenon which has to be attributed to a language pathology. However the opposition between learned etymology and popular etymology is not definitive and does not match up with the opposition true/false (at least not systematically). In this article, non scientific etymology is tackled under two of its aspects. The first one concerns the conditions of the phenomenon expressions (lapsus, more or less accidental repetitions, definitions, questions, argumentative operations, literary play…). The second aspect concerns - just like French - the standard procedures that popular etymology involves in its analyses (trends to the assimilating of homophones and paronyms; unaccomplished practice of morphological analysis; priviledge given to composition instead of derivation; trend to refuse sign arbitrariness...). Although these procedures sometimes go against analysis principles applied by modern linguistics, they show the way speakers manage a lexical knowledge (both cognitively and conversationally) which exceeds human memory capacities and which moreover has to be incessantly revised and reorganized.