iloveadverbs:

A friend sent me an etymological question last week.

‘I was wondering today. If you blend hoot with owl, you have howl. This almost seems like a blend to me, except that non-owl animals also howl, like wolves. What do you make of this phenomena?’

In linguistics, the term blend refers to a word that is formed from (incomplete) bits of other words. Smog, from smoke and fog is a classic example, particularly evocative because smog actually consists of smoke and fog blended together.

Howl could phonetically be a blend of hoot and owl. My initial instinct, though, was that howl had no relation to owl, as I do not think that owls howl. According to the OED, though, howling was once associated with owls.

howl, v.
1. intr. To utter a prolonged, loud, and doleful cry, in which the sound of u prevails. Said of dogs, wolves, and various wild animals; formerly also of the owl (now said to screech or hoot).

According to the etymological information, however, howl is not a blend.

ME. ?hulen, houlen = MDu. hûlen, Du. huilen, MHG. hûlen, hiulen, Ger. heulen: of echoic origin.

I then wondered whether the two words could have influenced each other by analogy. It turned out, though, that I was simply looking at things the wrong way around; Howl doesn’t come from owl, but owl comes from howl. Again, from the OED.

owl, n.
a Germanic base of imitative origin, derived from the typical hooting call of many species (compare HOWL n.)

Even better, an alternative term for owl is howlet. Thus, the relationship between howl and owl shows how a term can shift semantically (howling no longer means the sound an owl makes, at least not to me), but leave residue of its former meaning.

  2:04 pm  |   June 25 2009   |  8 notes   |  View comments