724
(Re)bracketing (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by ReadyUser31@lemmy.world to c/microblogmemes@lemmy.world
55 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Was slightly mindblown whenl discovered this.

The two parts to the word "helicopter" are not "helil" and "copter", but "helico" meaning spiral, and "pter" meaning one with wings, like pterodactyl.

1044 AM-5Mar 2018 21,200 Retweets 67,241 Lkes

wait WHAT

Aderinthemadscientist: Wait, so... does -copter come "from" helicopter?

108echoes: Yep! This is called rebracketing. Another famous example would be"-burger": the original food item is named after the German city, (Hamburgl+(er], but semantically reinterpreted as (ham]+[burger].

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] weirdwallace75@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago

So, is it a actually called a helicoter?

No. Language isn't always logical, and that's one way in which it isn't.

this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
724 points (98.7% liked)

Microblog Memes

5771 readers
928 users here now

A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.

Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.

Rules:

  1. Please put at least one word relevant to the post in the post title.
  2. Be nice.
  3. No advertising, brand promotion or guerilla marketing.
  4. Posters are encouraged to link to the toot or tweet etc in the description of posts.

Related communities:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
ReadyUser31@lemmy.world
aeronmelon@lemmy.world