Eggcorn Forum

I’d never before bothered to look up the etymology of “ferrule” because I thought its provenance was immediately transparent: the word refers to a small metal cap or band, and so it seemed clear that it must be derived from something like Latin *ferrulum, i.e., “little piece of iron.” I was surprised therefore when I ran into a reference yesterday that mentioned the word’s derivation from Old French virelle, “bracelet.” And the OED has a pretty solid paper trail, chronicling the word’s slow alternation from v-initial forms to f-initial ones (though the earliest instance they include is actually f-initial). The first citation is from the early 17th C, but the earliest citation for the “ferrule” spelling is from the very late 18th C. False etymology was clearly at work here.

Substitution of initial f for initial v doesn’t seem to be common – the Database has only vast>><<fast, though few>>view is of course a related change. I wondered whether West Country dialects in England – the source of “vixen” for a female fox – might be involved through hypercorrection, but that’s admittedly fairly wild speculation.

Here’s the OED spelling/etymology entry:

Forms: 5 vyrell, 7-8 verrel, il(l, 7-9 ferrel, -il, (7 ferrell), 8-9 ferule, 8 ferrule, 9 ferrol. [transformed (as if dim. of L. ferrum) from the older vyroll, VERREL, VIRL, ad. OF. virelle, virol (Fr. virole), med.L. virola: – L. viriola, dim. of viriæ, pl. bracelets.]

I’m actually a little confused here. This entry is from the Second Edition, and in that edition a “5” in the list of spelling variants is supposed to refer to the 15th C. But the earliest citation is from 1611, and it isn’t the “vyrell” form. I’m not sure what’s going on.

Last edited by patschwieterman (2010-09-18 01:35:30)