1. a popular but wrong belief about the origin of a word or phrase
   • ● This explanation may simply be a folk etymology.

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2. a process by which a word is changed, for example because people believe that it is related to another word, even though it is not, or to make a foreign word sound more familiar
   • ● Folk etymology has created the cheeseburger and the beanburger, but the first hamburgers were in fact named after the city of Hamburg.

[TahlilGaran] English Dictionary ▲