Plurals and Back-Formation
Did you know that pease is the singular form of the plural peas? You didn't? That's because it isn't, although it was, once upon a time, although there wasn't a plural back then...oh, heck, as the advertising world would say, "Let me explain."
Pease was once singular. Pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold, blahblahblah. In the English language, the use of "s" added to the end of a word to make a plural is so pervasive that people heard the word pease and thought it referred to more than one pea! In fact, there was no such word as pea, until the "s" sound was dropped. Then, of course, to talk about more than one pea, we had to add an "s" and make peas the plural, when logically, it should have been peases.
So much for logic. The process I've just described is called back-formation. It occurs when the ending of a word is mistaken for a suffix (the "s" sound in pease was dropped when most of the English-speaking population was illiterate, so they never saw how it was spelled) and dropped, frequently to make a new word. For instance, one may burgle a house, only because people who used the word burglar thought it meant "one who burgles". Which it does...now, anyway.
See the difference? We add a suffix (-er, -ar, -s) to a word to make a plural, indicate the person doing the action, etc. When we mistake an ending for a suffix, we take it away and inadvertently make a new word! We who are language purists frown on that, naturally, until you insufferable laypeople stuff the new word down our throats, at which point we nod judiciously and say, "Ah ha! Back-formation!" Like it was our idea all along.
Speaking of which, I'd like to add a post-mortem to the singular nature of the words kudos and gyros. Both come from Greek, and both are singular. Until the day I die, kudo and gyro are going to sound goofy to me. And I ain't even Greek.
Did you know that pease is the singular form of the plural peas? You didn't? That's because it isn't, although it was, once upon a time, although there wasn't a plural back then...oh, heck, as the advertising world would say, "Let me explain."
Pease was once singular. Pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold, blahblahblah. In the English language, the use of "s" added to the end of a word to make a plural is so pervasive that people heard the word pease and thought it referred to more than one pea! In fact, there was no such word as pea, until the "s" sound was dropped. Then, of course, to talk about more than one pea, we had to add an "s" and make peas the plural, when logically, it should have been peases.
So much for logic. The process I've just described is called back-formation. It occurs when the ending of a word is mistaken for a suffix (the "s" sound in pease was dropped when most of the English-speaking population was illiterate, so they never saw how it was spelled) and dropped, frequently to make a new word. For instance, one may burgle a house, only because people who used the word burglar thought it meant "one who burgles". Which it does...now, anyway.
See the difference? We add a suffix (-er, -ar, -s) to a word to make a plural, indicate the person doing the action, etc. When we mistake an ending for a suffix, we take it away and inadvertently make a new word! We who are language purists frown on that, naturally, until you insufferable laypeople stuff the new word down our throats, at which point we nod judiciously and say, "Ah ha! Back-formation!" Like it was our idea all along.
Speaking of which, I'd like to add a post-mortem to the singular nature of the words kudos and gyros. Both come from Greek, and both are singular. Until the day I die, kudo and gyro are going to sound goofy to me. And I ain't even Greek.
posted by Pryor at
9:46 PM
