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Yankee does not originate from the Cherokee word eankke meaning "coward". The word does not exist in the Cherokee language. It also does not come from a native tribe called the Yankoo meaning "invincible". No tribe has existed under that name. The word actually probably has Dutch origins. [92]
Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.). jungftak, n. Persian bird, the male of which had only one wing, on the right side, and the female only one wing, on the left side; instead of the missing wings, the male had a hook of bone, and the female an eyelet of bone, and it was by uniting hook and eye that they ...
A false etymology (fake etymology or pseudo-etymology) is a false theory about the origin or derivation of a specific word or phrase. When a false etymology becomes a popular belief in a cultural/linguistic community, it is a folk etymology (or popular etymology ). [ 1 ]
The genetic fallacy (also known as the fallacy of origins or fallacy of virtue) [1] is a fallacy of irrelevance in which arguments or information are dismissed or validated based solely on their source of origin rather than their content. In other words, a claim is ignored or given credibility based on its source rather than the claim itself.
Entish, a theoretical imaginary language in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, where tree creatures name objects by relating what they know of their entire past, similarly to Borges' divine language in this essay; Leishu – a genre of reference books historically compiled in China and other countries of the Sinosphere
In the philosophy of language, a proper name – examples include a name of a specific person or place – is a name which ordinarily is taken to uniquely identify its referent in the world. As such it presents particular challenges for theories of meaning, and it has become a central problem in analytic philosophy.
Pseudo-anglicisms can be created in various ways, such as by archaism, i.e., words that once had that meaning in English but are since abandoned; semantic slide, where an English word is used incorrectly to mean something else; conversion of existing words from one part of speech to another; or recombinations by reshuffling English units.
The term "false cognate" is sometimes misused to refer to false friends, but the two phenomena are distinct. [1] [2] False friends occur when two words in different languages or dialects look similar, but have different meanings. While some false friends are also false cognates, many are genuine cognates (see False friends § Causes). [2]