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In the histories of certain English words, there has been a re-analysis due to the fact that the English indefinite article has two forms: a, and an. This phenomenon is known as rebracketing or “juncture loss”.
The results have been in both directions: “a napron” evolving into “an apron”; and “an eke-name” evolving into “a nickname”.
Note that juncture loss may have occurred in a different language before a word reached English; for example, orange did not develop in English from *a norange, but rather the juncture loss occurred in Old French and Anglo-Norman orenge, or possibly in Italian.
The following 14 pages are in this category, out of 14 total.
Aa |
n |
n cont.ou |
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