Coming up on Word Matters, etymology of the folksy type.
I'm Emily Brewster,
and Word Matters is produced by Merriam-Webster in collaboration with New England Public Media.
On each episode, Merriam-Webster editors Amon Shea, Peter Sokolowski,
and I explore some aspect of the English language from the dictionary's vantage point.
Sometimes the history of a word is inextricably linked to a goof,
a gaffe, an utter, complete mistake.
In fact, there's a whole category of words for which this is true.
Here's Peter with words derived through a process called folk etymology.
We often say that English is a mongrel language.
We borrow words from other languages.
We sometimes say it's improper to say borrow,
even though that's the linguistic term that's frequently used
because we never give these words back.
And when we talk about foreign terms borrowed into English,
we tend to first think of What I would guess is fairly recent borrowings
because those words obviously still look foreign.
So you think of words like cannoli or karate or sudoku.
These are terms that are obviously kind of borrowings from a foreign language.
Older ones get more anglicized because