(Merry Wives, i. 1.)
also spelt venew, is from Fr. venue, "a venny in fencing" (Cotgrave). Carew has become Carey, and Beaulieu, in Hampshire, is called Bewley. Under the influence of these double forms we sometimes get the opposite change, e.g., purlieu, now generally used of the outskirts of a town, is for purley, a strip of disforested woodland. This is a contraction of Anglo-Fr. pour-allée, used to translate the legal Lat. perambulatio, a going through. A change of venue[96] is sometimes made when it seems likely that an accused person, or a football team, will not get justice from a local jury. This venue is in law Latin vicinetum, neighbourhood, which gave Anglo-Fr. visné, and this, perhaps by confusion with the venire facias, or jury summons, became venew, venue.
In the preceding examples the form has been chiefly affected. In the word luncheon both form and meaning have been influenced by the obsolete nuncheon, a meal at noon, Mid. Eng. none-chenche, for *none-schenche, noon draught, from Anglo-Sax. scencan,[97] to pour. Drinking seems to have been regarded as more important than eating, for in some counties we find this nuncheon replaced by bever, the Anglo-French infinitive from Lat. bibere, to drink. Lunch, a piece or hunk, especially of bread, also used in the sense of a "snack" (cf. Scot. "piece"), was extended to luncheon by analogy with nuncheon, which it has now replaced—
"So munch on, crunch on, take your nuncheon,
Breakfast, supper, dinner, luncheon."
(Browning, Pied Piper of Hamelin.)
WRONG ASSOCIATION
The term folk-etymology is often applied in a narrower sense to the corruption of words through a mistaken idea of their etymology or origin. The tendency of the uneducated is to distort an unfamiliar or unintelligible word into some form which suggests a meaning. Some cases may have originated in a kind of heavy jocularity, as in sparrow-grass for asparagus or sparagus (see p. [66]), or Rogue Riderhood's Alfred David for affidavit—
"'Is that your name?' asked Lightwood. 'My name?' returned the man. 'No; I want to take a Alfred David.'"
(Our Mutual Friend, Ch. 12.)
In others there has been a wrong association of ideas, e.g., the primrose, rosemary, and tuberose have none of them originally any connection with the rose. Primrose was earlier primerole, an Old French derivative of Latin primula; rosemary, French romarin, is from Lat. ros marinus, sea-dew; tuberose is the Latin adjective tuberosus, bulbous, tuberous. Or attempts are made at translation, such as Sam Weller's Have his carcase for Habeas Corpus, or the curious names which country folk give to such complaints as bronchitis, erysipelas, etc. To this class belongs Private Mulvaney's perversion of locomotor ataxy—