multitude did n’t always saypeaornewt . These seven words ab initio get down as other wrangle wholly .
1. Pea
Originally the word waspease , and it was curious . ( " The Scottish or tufted Pease … is a good white Pease jibe to be eaten . " ) The sound on the final stage was reanalyzed as a pluralsmarker , and at the oddment of the seventeenth century people depart talking about onepea . The old manakin lives on in the nursery verse " Pease - porridge red-hot , pease - porridge cold … "
2. Cherry
The same affair happened tocheriseorcheris , which come from Old Frenchcheriseand was reanalyzed as a plural form . So the singularcherrywas born .
3. Apron
Apronalso come into English from Old French and was originallynapron . ( " With hir napron feir .. She wypid sofft hir eyen . " ) But " a napron " was misheard often enough as " an proscenium " that by the 1600s thenwas dropped .
4. Umpire
Umpirelost itsnfrom the same kind of confusion . It come to English from the Middle Frenchnonper , imply " without peer ; unmatchable . " ( " Maked I not a louedaye bytwene god and mankynde , and chese a mayde to be nompere , to put the quarel at ende ? " ) Anompereor anompere ? Then - less form win out .
5. Newt
The confusion about which give-and-take thenbelonged to could end up swing the other way too . A triton was originally anewt(“The carcases of snakes , ewts , and other serpents " is cite in 1584’sThe Discoverie of Witchcraft ) , but " an ewt " could easy be misheard as " a triton , " and in this case , thenleft the " an " and stuck to the thenewt .
6. Nickname
Thenalso jaunt over from the " an " to stick tonickname , which was originallyekename , meaning " added name . "
7. Alligator
Alligatorcame to English from the Spanish IE who first encounteredel lagarto(“lizard " ) in the New World . While the big lizards were for a prison term referred to aslagartos , theelaccompanied often enough that it became an inseparable part of the English Logos .
All example quotes come from the Oxford English Dictionary .
This list first range in 2013 .
