| metanalysis |
| Definition:
A language-change process caused by the reinterpreting of word boundaries. Note: It often happens to n's. They are removed from the beginning of a noun and attached to a preceding indefinite article. |
| Example:
(1) a naddre (Middle English) became an adder (Modern English) (2) a napron became an apron (3) an ewt became a newt |
| Etymology: The word was coined — by the linguist Otto Jespersen — by combining the Greek meta, across, with analusis, loosening up. |
| Oxford English Dictionary: Its first citation is from 1914: "I have ventured to coin the word ‘metanalysis’ for the phenomenon frequent in all languages that words or word-groups are by a new generation analyzed differently from the analysis of a former age." (O. Jespersen, Modern English Grammar, II. v. 141,) |