A difference in spelling, originally accidental, but perpetuated by an apparent difference of meaning, is seen in flour, flower; metal, mettle. Flour is the flower, i.e. the finest part, of meal, Fr. fleur de farine, "flower, or the finest meale" (Cotgrave). In the Nottingham Guardian (29th Aug. 1911) I read that—
"Mrs Kernahan is among the increasing number of persons who do not discriminate between metal and mettle, and writes 'Margaret was on her metal.'"
It might be added that this author is in the excellent company of Shakespeare—
"See whe'r their basest metal be not mov'd."
(Julius Cæsar, i. 1.)
There is no more etymological difference between metal and mettle than between the "temper" of a cook and that of a sword-blade.
Parson is a doublet of person, the priest perhaps being taken as "representing" the Church, for Lat. persona, an actor's mask, from per, through, and sonare, to sound,[106] was also used of a costumed character or dramatis persona. Mask, which ultimately belongs to an Arabic word meaning buffoon, has had a sense development exactly opposite to that of person, its modern meaning corresponding to the Lat. persona from which the latter started. Parson shows the popular pronunciation of er, now modified by the influence of traditional spelling. We still have it in Berkeley, clerk, Derby, sergeant, as we formerly did in merchant. Proper names, in which the orthography depends on the "taste and fancy of the speller," or the phonetic theories of the old parish clerk, are often more in accordance with the pronunciation, e.g., Barclay, Clark, Darby, Sargent, Marchant. Posy, in both its senses, is a contraction of poesy, the flowers of a nosegay expressing by their arrangement a sentiment like that engraved on a ring. The latter use is perhaps obsolete—
"A hoop of gold, a paltry ring
That she did give me; whose posy was
For all the world like cutler's poetry
Upon a knife: 'Love me and leave me not.'"
(Merchant of Venice, v. 1.)