An adder, or a nadder?

Sometimes words get stuck together; sometimes they split apart.

Just lately, Whitney Houston suffered a “wardrobe malfunction.” Fortunately for her, her gown remained “in tact” while she was on camera in London. She said, “I sang myself out of my clothes.”

Lots of times people don’t know quite where words divide. A friend told me of a mother and daughter on the Metro in Washington. The daughter was fractious and the mother said to her: “Camilla! I have two words for you. ‘Be have.'”

Of course we like to think that we know the words “intact” and “behave,” but the history of English is filled with words that stuck together or came apart. “Adder,” the serpent, came from a confusion between “an adder” and “a nadder.” The article, “an” got stuck on “nadder” and the result was “adder.” The same thing happened to “apron” which used to be “napron.” “Mine own” likewise was revised into “my nown” in the north of England, and so people could say “your nown” or “his nown.”

“My cousin lives in a nice partment” came up on a high school essay once. “Alot” is repaired by a spell checker, but “I like her alot” appears often in handwritten letters. Lots of young people think “I like her a lot” (with a space) looks funny.

Shakespeare’s Hamlet uses both gainst and against, but the reason is poetry. If Shakespeare needs to give (or take) a syllable to make up the meter he has both gainst and against to choose from.

There are less obvious motivating factors. Why is eavesdrop one word and eaves trough two? Why is maldemar (“motion sickness”) one word and chemin de fer, the gambling game, three? How come ne’er-do-well and Johnny-come-lately limp into oneworddom with the help of a lot of punctuation?

Google “you’ll have your sayso,” “from the getgo,” and “let’s have a looksee” and you’ll find words that have new meanings just by dropping the space.

Words work in mysterious ways, their wonders to perform.