Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Thanks for your understanding.
Chris -- 2018-04-11
A lanyard is a short piece of rope or leather used to secure another line or some object. Nowadays we apply the word to the straps or braided cords that we put around our wrists or necks to secure some object that would be easy to lose, such as a whistle or a key. The Wikpedia article on lanyards has a good summary of the changing fortunes of the word and some helpful pictures.
An old eggcorn may lie behind the “-yard†portion of the word “lanyard.†The English word was borrowed from the medieval French “lanière.†The various English phonetic spellings of the French pronunciation ranged through “lanyer†and “lennard,†finally converging on “lanyard†in the eighteenth century.
Presumably the change to “lanyard†happened under the impression that the word had some reference to “yard.†But which “yard?†There is “yard,†the popular three-foot length that grids an American football field. There is also “yard†or “yardarm,†the cross-piece of a mast that supports the sails of a sailing vessel. Then there is an older “yard†that is a measure of length similar in size to a modern rod. This longer “yard†was also called a “land yard,†and at least one eighteenth-century writer eggcorned “lanyard†as a “landyard.â€
Hatching new language, one eggcorn at a time.
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