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The term “conspiracy theory” calls to mind a variety of dubious claims and controversies, like rumors about Area 51, claims that the Earth is flat, and the movement known as QAnon.
At first blush, these phenomena would seem to have little in common with bogus word origins. But there are a variety of false etymologies that spread virally and refuse to go away, in much the same way that stories about chemtrails, black helicopters, and UFOs refuse to die.
What is a false etymology? Simply put, it’s an invented word history that seems to explain a “real” or hidden meaning that most people are unaware of.
Some examples: “rule of thumb” has nothing to do with the thickness of a switch that husbands could employ to strike their wives. “Marmalade” doesn’t derive from the utterance “Marie est malade” (Mary is ill). “News” isn’t an acronym for “north, east, west, and south.”
And despite Van Halen’s 1991 studio album title, the phrase “for unlawful carnal knowledge” is not the origin of the language’s most notorious expletive. Ditto for “tip”—it’s not an acronym for “to insure promptness.” And “posh” doesn’t derive from “port out, starboard home” (the preferred—and more expensive—cabin option on British ships bound for India).
Many of these stories have been floating around for decades or even longer. But why do they persist? Their longevity and staying power may spring from the same psychological impulse that gives rise to urban legends. Claiming that “butterfly” used to be “flutterby” is not far removed from stories about finding a bloody hook on one’s car door handle.
In this way, false etymologies function like memes, and they can be spread in the same way. Even in my pre-internet youth, I remember high school classmates sharing these word origins via word of mouth, with the certainty that is a hallmark of the teenage mind.
But it may be the element of secrecy that makes these stories so seductive. The sharing of such “facts”—in this case, I know something that most people don’t, and now you do too—is almost like an initiation ritual to a hidden world of arcane knowledge.
More Than a Passing Resemblance
Despite their similarity to urban legends and memes, false etymologies may have even more in common with conspiracy theories. Specifically, they share at least four attributes:
“Official” explanations are not to be trusted. False etymologies should be trivially easy to disprove, since debunking them only requires consulting a physical dictionary. Vast amounts of effort have been expended by lexicographers in researching word origins: their first appearance in print, cognates in other languages, and the tracing of their roots—over centuries or even millennia—to origins in Germanic, Latin, Greek, or Indo-European. This can all be found in unabridged dictionary, spelled out in often mind-numbing detail. But because this scholarship is the product of elites, there are those who instinctively mistrust it.
Emotional appeal. People who subscribe to the false “rule of thumb” etymology may be attracted to it as an example of a sexist and patriarchal mindset that was dominant until relatively recently. It can be titillating to think that the language contains fossilized clues about discarded beliefs and practices. And the English language certainly does contain relics of days gone by—just not in this case.
Narrative coherency. The word “butterfly” doesn’t seem to make any sense: most members of the order Lepidoptera aren’t yellow, and they certainly aren’t flies (in fact, they’re arthropods, like spiders and cockroaches). But “flutterby” perfectly describes their erratic, unpredictable movement through the air. It should be the origin of butterfly!
There are things that the “experts” can’t explain. “Okay” is one of the most used expressions on the planet, having been borrowed from English by speakers of many other languages. But despite this, etymologists can’t agree on its origin story. It may be derived from the intentional misspelling “oll korrect,” but it may also have its origins in Choctaw, or Greek, or Scottish. The historical record simply doesn’t provide enough evidence for us to know for sure.
Here’s another example: We don’t really know where the word “dog” came from! It can be traced back to Old English, but then the trail goes cold. There isn’t a similar term in any other tongue related to English. And if the experts can’t conclusively pin down the origins of words like “okay” or “dog,” then what else don’t they know? And what might they be hiding?
Sowing Confusion Online
A mistrust of elites is hardly a recent development, but what is new is the proliferation of online, crowdsourced alternatives to standard reference works. This approach seems to function well in the case of Wikipedia, but only because articles must include references and a small army of volunteers is on the lookout for vandalism.
But the entries found on websites like Urban Dictionary, which purport to provide the meanings and origins of words and phrases, are not vetted like Wikipedia articles. As a result, word conspiracy theorists have yet another vector for spreading misinformation and fabricated histories. For individuals seeking authoritative information about word origins online, it can be hard to separate fact from fiction.
