Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2018-04-11
This is the latest version of a word that’s been around, and mutating, at least since the 10th century. The OED says
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hang-nail
[f. HANG v. + NAIL; but historically an accommodated form of angnail; cf. AGNAIL 3.]
A small piece of epidermis partially detached, but hanging by one end, near to a nail.
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Their etymology of “agnail” (defs below) starts with the delicious peeve “A word of which the application (and perhaps the form) has been much perverted by pseudo-etymology”. In Old and Middle English (1) it meant ‘a corn on the toe or foot’, the “nail” part having “the sense, not of ‘finger-nail,’ unguis, but of a nail (of iron, etc.) clavus, hence, a hard round-headed excrescence fixed in the flesh”. But at least by the late 1500s (2) it had gotten associated with finger- and toenails, and from there it was got eggcorned (3; emphasis added) into its present pronunciation and meaning.
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agnail
1. A corn on the toe or foot. Obs.
2. Any ‘painful swelling,’ ‘ulcer,’ or ‘sore,’ under, about, around the toe- or finger-nail; in J. and subseq. Dicts. identified with whitlow. [This change of explanation seems due to pseudo-etymology; whether confusion with Fr. angonailles ‘botches, (pocky) bumps, or sores’, or med.L. anghiones, anguinalia ‘carbuncles’ contributed the ‘ulcers’ or ‘sores’ is uncertain; but _- nail_, misinterpreted, fixed the locality. The further identification with whitlow (in the Dicts.) seems due to collating the Gr. name of the latter paronukhia (f. parh ‘beside’ + onykh- ‘nail’) with ag-nail (quasi ag- ‘at’ + nail). Ash explains agnail as ‘a whitlow, paronychia,’ and paronychia as ‘a perpetual sore under the root of the nail, a whitlow.’]
3. A ‘hang-nail’; see quot. [Hang-nail, given by Halliwell as a dialect word, is evidently like the Sc. equivalent anger-nail (ANGER = irritation, inflammation), a corruption of ang-nail, putting a plausible meaning into it. That is, ang-nail, dialectally pronounced hang-nail, was explained as ‘hanging’ or detached nail. This explanation of agnail appears first in Bailey 1737 (ed. 1736 having only sense 2); the form hang-nail is in Craig 1847, and is now commoner in London than agnail.]
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m a m
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That’s a topic I find interesting… I think possibly hundreds of our accepted words started as eggcorns.
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