- sentimental. The word
comes from Old
French napron,
meaning a
small piece of cloth. Over time "a
napron"
became "an apron"
through a
linguistic process...
-
Originally naperon in
French (from nappe, "cloth"), the ⟨n⟩ in the
phrase ⟨a
napron⟩
shifted across the word
boundary to
create the
modern form ⟨an apron⟩,...
- article.
Rebracketing in the
opposite direction saw the
Middle English a
napron become an apron. In back-formation, a new word is
created by
removing elements...
- once have said
something like: "Ah, I
found this ewt and this
nadder in my
napron while baking numble-pie." A few
generations later the cook's descendant...
- to many
cases of
juncture loss, for
example transforming the
original a
napron into the
modern an apron. The
Persian indefinite article is yek, meaning...
- 'a nadder' in
Middle English was
rebracketed to 'an adder' (just as 'a
napron'
became 'an apron' and 'a nompere'
changed into 'an umpire'). In keeping...
- "extra" (as in eke out
meaning "add to"), and in the
other direction, a
napron (meaning a
little tablecloth,
related to the word napkin)
became an apron...
