Ten Words That Started Out as Errors



Mental Floss put together a list of commonly used English words that initially were errors. One example is the word "tornado." It originated from the Spanish word "tronada," meaning "thunderstorm." The second and third letters being reversed is an example of metathesis. Metathesis means "transposition of two phonemes in a word (as in the development of crud from curd or the pronunciation \ˈpər-tē\ for pretty)" according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Mental Floss provides other examples of words formed by metathesis: "bridd" turned into "bird," "beorht" into "bright," and "luchorpan" into "leprechaun."

Learn nine other words that initially were errors here. 

Image: Wikihow.com 


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