this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
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This is an example of folk etymology. The original word was Spanish cucaracha, but English speakers couldn't make anything meaningful of that when they borrowed it into English, and so they folk etymologized it into cock "male chicken" and roach "a type of fish", that sounds similar enough to cucaracha to be reasonable.
The same thing happened to Cayo Hueso "Bone Key" as "Key West", for example.
I hate that THAT is acceptable but when I combine "no one" to "noone" someone HAS to call me out for it and act like English never changes to become easier
it's extremely petty but I'm still mad about it
I think about better example for you to follow would be how "a napron" turned into "an apron."
However, I'm not a fan of "noone" as it doesn't look like it would be pronounced as "no one." It could perhaps be "no-one" or "noöne", but they seem off as well. And very few people use umlauts in English to signify that the two consecutive vowels are separate sounds (The New Yorker is the only publicaton that I know about that does this, but I'm not sure if they stopped).