1. Lexicology as a branch of linguistics. Its aims and tasks. Subject structure. Links with other branches of linguistics.

Lexicology (from Gr lexis ‘word’ and logos ‘learning’) is the part of linguistics dealing with the vocabulary of the language and
the properties of words as the main units of language. The term v o c a b u l a r y is used to denote the system formed by the
sum total of all the words and word equivalents that the language possesses. The term word denotes the basic unit of a given
language resulting from the association of a particular meaning with a particular group of sounds capable of a particular
grammatical employment. A word therefore is simultaneously a semantic, grammatical and phonological unit.

The term Lexicology is composed of two Greek morphemes: lexis meaning ‘word, phrase’ (hence lexicos ‘having to do with
words’) and logos which denotes ‘learning, a department of knowledge’.

Lexicology as a branch of linguistics has its own aims and methods of scientific research, its basic task being a study and
systematic description of vocabulary in respect to its origin, development and current use. Lexicology is concerned with
words, variable word-groups, phraseological units, and with morphemes which make up words.

Subject of lexicology is the vocabulary of the language, the systemic relations between words. The main task - to study words,
their lexical meanings and their types, and studying of the origin and use of word.

Kinds:

General Lexicology – general study of words and vocabulary, irrespective of the specific features of any particular language

Special Lexicology – description of the characteristics peculiarities in the vocabulary of a given language

Historical Lexicology – origin of various words, their change and development, linguistic and extra-linguistic factors
influencing the structure of words/

Descriptive Lexicology – vocabulary of a given language at a given stage of its development

Links with other branches of linguistics:

1) Lexicology is closely connected with phonetics because they have the same object of studies, they both studies the word, but
phonetics studies the outer form and lexicology studies the inner form of the word.

2) Lexicology is connected with grammar because lexicology studies words and grammar studies the grammatical relations
between words and how words are combined into phrases and sentences. Meaningful communication is not possible without
knowing the grammar rules.

3) Lexicology is connected with the history of language because the history of language studies the changes and the
development of the vocabulary in the course of time.

4) Lexicology is connected with stylistics because stylistics studies the differentiation of the vocabulary according to the
sphere of communication.

5) Lexicology is connected with the sociolinguistics because sociolinguistics studies the extra linguistic and social causes of the
changes in the vocabulary of a language.

Synchronic and diachronic approaches to the study of language.

Synchronic approaches - concerned with the language vocabulary as it exists at a given time.

diachronic approaches - development and changes of the language, evolution of vocabulary units as times goes by.

2. Etymological peculiarities of the English vocabulary. Borrowed words

Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.

The term “Etymology” is derived from the Greek word – “etymon” – which means the true, original meaning of a word.
According to the etymological principle the English vocabulary is usually divided into two uneven classes: native words which
make up about 30% of the English vocabulary and borrowed words which make up about 70% of the English vocabulary.

Native words are words which belong to the original word stock. Words adopted from foreign languages are known as borrowed
words, or loan words, or borrowings.

Borrowings are adopted in the course of contacts between peoples speaking different languages.
The reason of borrowings:

1. to fill a gap in vocabulary

2. It represents the same concept but in some aspect: a new shade of meaning.

Donor language -the language from which the word was borrowed.

Recipient language – the language which borrowed the word.

Source of borrowing – the language from which the words was immediately borrowed.

Origin of borrowing – the language to which the word may be ultimately traced.

A native word – only relatively started with the English literature tradition.

The native words are further subdivided by diachronic linguistics into those of Indo-European stock and those of Common
Germanic origin.

There is also certain confusion between the terms s o u r c e o f b o r r o w i n g s and o r i g i n o f t h e w o r d .

This confusion may be seen in contradictory marking of one and the same word as, say, a French borrowing in one dictionary
and Latin borrowing in another. It is suggested here that the term s o u r c e of borrowing should be applied to the
language from which this or that particular word was taken into English. So when describing words as Latin, French or
Scandinavian borrowings we point out their source but not their origin. The term o r i g i n оf t h e w o r d should be
applied to the language the word may be traced to. Thus, the French borrowing table is Latin by origin (L. tabula), the Latin
borrowing school came into Latin from the Greek language (Gr. schole), so it may be described as Greek by origin.

Etymologically the vocabulary of the English language consists of two layers: ►the native stock of words (< 25%); ►the
borrowed stock of words. ►Donor language over 350 ►Recipient language

Source of Borrowing vs Origin of Borrowing

►Source of borrowing = the language from which the word was immediately borrowed;

►origin of borrowing = the language to which the word may be ultimately traced.

►Table – Latin > French > English ►Elephant – Arabic > French > English

Assimilation (nativization) is the process of changing the adopted word. It can be ►phonetic; ►grammatical; ►semantic;
►graphic.

Degrees of assimilation

Borrowed (loan) words can be ►completely assimilated; ►partially assimilated; ►non-assimilated (barbarisms).

3. The Anglo-Saxon element in the English vocabulary

Germanic settler tribes (Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians) entered Britain in AD 449 onwards and displaced the original
Celtic-speaking inhabitants. When in the 5th century of our era the Anglo-Saxon tribes came to Britain, they brought their
dialects, which we now refer to as Old English and which formed the foundation for the ultimate development of Modern
English.

Many of the words are still used today. Some are grammatical words (such as be, in, that) while others are lexical words (sing,
live, go). Anglo-Saxon words are usually short and concrete. Although Anglo-Saxon lexemes form only a relatively small
proportion of the modern lexicon, in any passage of English, there is a relatively high density of Anglo-Saxon-derived lexemes,
and indeed the 100 most frequently used items are almost all Anglo-Saxon.

These words are of parts of the body (arm, bone, chest, ear, eye, foot, hand, heart), the natural environment (field, hedge, hill,
land, meadow, wood), the domestic life (door, floor, home, house), the calendar (day, month, moon, sun, year), animals (cow,
dog, fish, goat, hen, sheep, swine), common adjectives (black, dark, good, long, white, wide) and common verbs (become, do,
eat, fly, go, help, kiss, live, love, say, see, sell, send, think).

4. The Celtic element in the English vocabulary

When the Anglo-Saxons took control of Britain, the original Celts moved to the northern and western fringes of the island –
which is why the only places where Celtic languages are spoken in Britain today are in the west (Welsh in Wales) and north
(Scottish Gaelic in the Scottish Highlands). Celtic speakers seem to have been kept separate from the Anglo-Saxon speakers.
Those who remained in other parts of Britain must have merged in with the Anglo-Saxons. The end result is a surprising small
number – only a handful – of Celtic borrowings. Some of them are dialectal such as cumb (deep valley) or loch (lake).
Reminders of Britain’s Celtic past are mainly in the form of Celtic-based placenames including river names such as Avon,
‘river’, Don, Exe, Severn and Thames. Town names include Dover, ‘water’, Eccles, ‘church’, Kent, Leeds, London and York.

5. The classical element in the English vocabulary

Latin borrowings

Latin, being the language of the Roman Empire, had already influenced the language of the Germanic tribes even before they
set foot in Britain. Latin loanwords reflected the superior material culture of the Roman Empire, which had spread across
Europe: street, wall, candle, chalk, inch, pound, port, camp.

The native Celts had also learnt some Latin, and some of these were borrowed by the Anglo-Saxons in Britain: sign, pearl,
anchor, oil , chest, pear, lettuce.

Latin was also the language of Christianity, and St Augustine arrived in Britain in AD 597 to christianise the nation. Terms in
religion were borrowed: pope, bishop, monk, nun, cleric, demon, disciple, mass, priest, shrine. Christianity also brought with it
learning: circul, not (note), paper, scol (school), epistol.

Many Latin borrowings came in in the early MnE period. Sometimes, it is difficult to say whether the loan-words were direct
borrowings from Latin or had come in through French (because, after all, Latin was also the language of learning among the
French). Many of the new words are academic in nature therefore: affidavit, apparatus, caveat, corpuscle, compendium,
equilibrium, equinox, formula, inertia, incubate, momentum, molecule, pendulum, premium, stimulus, subtract, vaccinate,
vacuum. This resulted in the distinction between learned and popular vocabulary in English.

The 7th century A.D. became significant for Christianization of England. As Latin was the official language of the Christian
Church, so the spread of Christianity was accompanied by a new wave of Latin borrowings. These loans came mostly from
church Latin and indicated in the first place persons, objects and ideas associated with church and religious rituals, e.g. priest
(<Lat. presbyter), bishop (<Lat. episcopus), monk (<Lat. monachus), nun (<Lat. nonna), candle (<Lat. candela). Besides, the
first schools in England being church schools and the first teachers - priests and monks, it is only natural that educational
terms were also borrowed from Latin, e.g. school (<Lat. schola<Gr.), scholar (<Lat. scholaris) and magister (<Lat. magister).

Greek borrowings

Greek was also a language of learning, and Latin itself borrowed words from Greek. Indeed the Latin alphabet is an adaptation
of the Greek alphabet.

Many of the Greek loan-words were through other languages: through French – agony, aristocracy, enthusiasm, metaphor;
through Latin – ambrosia, nectar, phenomenon, rhapsody. There were some general vocabulary items like fantasy, cathedral,
charismatic, idiosyncrasy as well as more technical vocabulary like anatomy, barometer, microscope, homoeopathy.

During the Renaissance and after, there were modern coinages from Greek elements (rather than borrowings). For example,
photo- yielded photograph, photogenic, photolysis and photokinesis; bio- yielded biology, biogenesis, biometry, bioscope; tele-
yielded telephone, telepathy, telegraphic, telescopic. Other Greek elements used to coin new words include crypto-, hydro-,
hyper-, hypo-, neo- and stereo-.

The Renaissance period in England as elsewhere was marked by significant interest in the ancient civilizations of Greece and
Rome. Science, art and culture were developing, hence a considerable number of Greek and Latin borrowings in these strata of
the language, and these are mostly abstract words and numerous scientific and artistic terms, e.g. to create, to elect, intelligent,
filial, major, minor, moderate, permanent, datum, method, music, phenomenon, philosophy, status <Latin; atom, cycle, ethics,
aesthetic <Greek.

6. The Scandinavian Element in the English Vocabulary

The Scandinavian invasion of England which proved to be of linguistic importance began in the 8th century. In 1017 the Danes
conquered the whole of England and reigned over up to 1042.
The Danish settlers intermingled with the native population. The fact of both languages being Germanic facilitated mutual
understanding and word borrowings. That is why it is difficult sometimes to say whether a word is native or borrowed from
Scandinavian. Words are sometimes considered to be of the Scandinavian origin if they were not met in Anglo-Saxon written
documents up to the 11th century. Some examples of Scandinavian borrowings are the following: anger (OSc. angr – sorrow);
gate (OSc. gata); sky (OSc. sky – cloud); want ( OSc. vant – lacking); to hit (OSc. hitta – not to miss); ill (OSc. illr – bad); ugly
(OSc. uggligr – frightful)

In distinguishing Scandinavian words we may sometimes apply the criterion of sound such as [sk] – skill, scare, scream. The
hard [g] and [k] sounds before i and e speak for the Scandinavian origin of the word since English words started having the
palatalised [j] and [t ] sounds before i and e already in Old English. But these features are not always sufficient because
sometimes we find [sk] in words of Latin, Greek or French origin or in Northern dialects.

7. The Norman-French Element in the English Vocabulary

The French layer rates second to Latin in bulk. It has been estimated that English owes one fourth of its vocabulary to French.
French borrowings penetrated into English in two ways: from the Norman dialect (during the first centuries after the Norman
Conquest of 1066) and from the French national literary language beginning with the 15th century.

The Normans who conquered England in 1066 were of Scandinavian origin and their French differed somewhat from the
central dialect of France. During two centuries after the Norman Conquest the linguistic situation in England was rather
complicated; the feudal lords spoke the Norman dialect of the French language, the people spoke English, scientific and
theological literature was in Latin, the court literature was in French. Latin and French were used in administration and school
teaching. Gradually English assimilated many French words that either ousted their Saxon equivalents (OE unhope – despair;
OE tholemodness – patience), brought new concepts (exchequer, parliament) or became synonyms to native words (to help =
to aid; weak = feeble).

Before the Norman Conquest only a few words were borrowed: proud, market.

French words borrowed during the period of the 12th –16th centuries show the social status of the Norman invaders and their
supremacy in economic, cultural and political development. At that time a lot of terms were borrowed into the English
language:

 terms of rank: duke, prince, baron  terms of art: art, beauty, paint;
 law terms: prison, jury, judge;  terms of architecture: pillar, palace, castle.
 military terms: army, peace, soldier;  In most cases such words were completely
 religious terms: pray, faith, saint; assimilated.

Later French borrowings can be easily identified by their peculiar form and pronunciation: garage, technique, machine.

8. Ukrainian and Russian borrowings in the English vocabulary

Besides two main groups of borrowings (Romanic and Germanic) there are also borrowings from a lot of other languages. We
shall speak about Russian borrowings, borrowings from the language, which belongs to Slavic languages.

There were constant contacts between England and Russia and they borrowed words from one language into the other.
Among early Russian borrowings there are mainly words connected with trade relations, Russian cuisine, and some other
things, such as: rouble, copeck, pood, sterlet, vodka, sable, babushka, balalaika, banya, beluga, kasha, kvass, laika, matryoshka,
samovar, shchi, shaman, and also words relating to nature, such as: taiga, tundra, steppe etc.

There is also a large group of Russian borrowings which came into English through Russian literature of the 19-th century,
such as: Narodnik, moujik, duma, zemstvo, volost, ukase etc, and also words which were formed in Russian with Latin roots,
such as: nihilist, intelligenzia, Decembrist etc.

After the Great October Revolution many new words appeared in Russian connected with the new political system, new
culture, and many of them were borrowed into English, such as: bolshevik, collectivization, udarnik, Komsomol, tovarishch,
Kremlin, Kalashnikov, etc and also translation loans, such as: shock worker, collective farm, five-year plan etc.

English words of Ukrainian origin are words in the English language which were borrowed or derived from the Ukrainian
language.

Some of them may have entered English via Russian, Polish, Yiddish, or some other language. They may have originated in
other languages, but are used to describe notions related to Ukraine. Some are regionalisms, used in English-speaking places
with a significant Ukrainian Diaspora population, especially Canada, but all of these have entered the general English
vocabulary. For example, baba (grandmother or old woman), babka (sweet Easter bread), bandura (a stringed musical
instrument), borshch (beat soup), Cossack (Ukrainian Kozak, a freedom-loving horseman of the steppes), Hetman (a Cossack
military leader), holubtsi (Canadian English, cabbage rolls), hopak (a lively traditional dance), kasha (porridge), kubasa,
kolbassa (Canadian English, from Ukrainian kovbasa), paska (Canadian English, a decorated Easter bread, also paskha, a rich
dessert with curd cheese and dried fruit), pysanka (a decorated Easter egg), varenyky (boiled dumplings with potato or meat
inside) etc.

9. INTERNATIONAL WORDS

As the process of borrowing is mostly connected with the appearance of new notions which the loan words serve to express, it
is natural that the borrowing is seldom limited to one language. Words of identical origin that occur in several languages as
a result of simultaneous or successive borrowings from one ultimate source are called international words.

International words play an especially prominent part in various terminological systems including the vocabulary of science,
industry and art. The etymological sources of this vocabulary reflect the history of world culture. Thus, for example, the
mankind’s cultural debt to Italy is reflected in the great number of Italian words connected with architecture, painting and
especially music that are borrowed into most European languages: allegro, andante, aria, arioso, barcarole, baritone (and other
names for voices), concert, duet, opera (and other names for pieces of music), piano.

The rate of change in technology, political, social and artistic life has been greatly accelerated in the 20th century and so has
the rate of growth of international wordstock. A few examples of comparatively new words due to the progress of science will
suffice to illustrate the importance of international vocabulary: algorithm, antenna, antibiotic, automation, bionics,
cybernetics, entropy, gene, genetic code, graph, microelectronics, microminiaturisation, quant, quasars, pulsars, ribosome, etc.

This layer is of great importance for the foreign language teacher not only because many words denoting abstract notions are
international but also because he must know the most efficient ways of showing the points of similarity and difference
between such words as control : : контроль; general : : генерал; industry : : индустрия or magazine : : магазин, etc. usually
called ‘translator’s false friends’.

The treatment of international words at English lessons would be one-sided if the teacher did not draw his pupils’ attention to
the spread of the English vocabulary into other languages. We find numerous English words in the field of sport: football, out,
match, tennis, time. A large number of English words are to be found in the vocabulary pertaining to clothes: jersey, pullover,
sweater, nylon, tweed, etc. Cinema and different forms of entertainment are also a source of many inter-national words of
English origin: film, club, cocktail, jazz.

10. Archaisms

A r c h a i s m s are words that were once common but are now replaced by synonyms. When these new
synonymous words, whether borrowed or coined within the English language, introduce nothing conceptually new, the
stylistic value of older words tends to be changed; on becoming rare they acquire a lofty poetic tinge due to their ancient
flavour, and then they are associated with poetic diction.
Some examples will illustrate this statement: aught n ‘anything whatever’, betwixt prp ‘between’, billow n ‘wave’, chide v
‘scold’, damsel n ‘a noble girl’, ere prp ‘before’, even n ‘evening’, forbears n ‘ancestors’, hapless a ‘unlucky’, hark v ‘listen’,
lone a ‘lonely’, morn n ‘morning’, perchance adv ‘perhaps’, save prp, cj ‘except’, woe n ‘sorrow’, etc.
When the causes of the word’s disappearance are extra-linguistic, e.g. when the thing named is no longer used, its
name becomes an h i s t о r i s m . Historisms are very numerous as names for social relations, institutions and objects
of material culture of the past. The names of ancient transport means, such as types of boats or types of carriages, ancient
clothes, weapons, musical instruments, etc. can offer many examples.

11. Neologisms

The process may be observed by its results, that is by studying new words or neologisms. New notions constantly come into
being, requiring new words to name them. Sometimes a new name is introduced for a thing or notion that continues to exist,
and the older name ceases to be used. The number of words in a language is therefore not constant, the increase, as a rule,
more than makes up for the leak-out.

New words and expressions or neоlоgisms are created for new things irrespective of their scale of importance. They may be
all-important and concern some social relationships, such as a new form of state, e. g. People’s Republic, or something
threatening the very existence of humanity, like nuclear war. Or again the thing may be quite insignificant and short-lived, like
fashions in dancing, clothing, hairdo or footwear (e. g. roll-neck). In every case either the old words are appropriately changed
in meaning or new words are borrowed, or more often coined out of the existing language material either according to the
patterns and ways already productive in the language at a given stage of its development or creating new ones.

Thus, a neologism is a newly coined word or phrase or a new meaning for an existing word, or a word borrowed from
another language.

The intense development of science and industry has called forth the invention and introduction of an immense number of
new words and changed the meanings of old ones, e. g. aerobic, black hole, com-puter, isotope, feedback, penicillin, pulsar,
quasar, tape-recorder, su-permarket and so on.

12. T t r a n s l a t i o n - l o a n s

In its second meaning the term b o r r o w i n g is sometimes used in a wider sense. It is extended onto the so-called
translation-loans (or loan-translations) and s e man t i c borrowi n g .
T r a n s l a t i o n - l o a n s are words and expressions formed from the material available in the language
after the patterns characteristic of the given language, but under the influence of some foreign words and
expressions (e. g. mother tongue<L. lingua materna; it goes without saying < Fr. cela va sans dire; wall newspaper <
Russ. стенгазета). Semantic borrowing is the appearance of a new meaning due to the influence of a related word in
another language (e.g. the word propaganda and reaction acquired their political meanings under the influence of
French, deviation and bureau entered political vocabulary, as in right and left deviations, Political bureau, under the
influence of Russian).

Further on we shall use the term bоrrоwing in its second meaning, as a borrowing proper or a word taken over in its
material form.

Distinction should be made between true borrowings and words formed out of morphemes borrowed from Latin and
Greek, e.g. telephone, phonogram. Such words were never part of Latin or Greek and they do not reflect any contacts
with the peoples speaking those languages.

It is of importance to note that the term b o r r o w i n g belongs to diachronic description of the word-stock. Thus the
words wine, cheap, pound introduced by the Romans into all Germanic dialects long before the Angles and the Saxons
settled on the British Isles, and such late Latin loans as alibi, memorandum, stratum may all be referred to borrowings
from the same language in describing their origin, though in modern English they constitute distinctly different groups of
words.

Calque - a word taken from one language and translated in a literal or word for word way to be used in another.

13. Semantic borrowings

Another instance of foreign influence upon the semantic structure of some English words is s e m a n t i c b o r r o w i n g ,
i.e. the borrowing of meaning from a word in a foreign language. This often takes place in English words having common roots
with some words in another language (international words today reflect this process best), e.g. the words pioneer and cadres
which are international words have ac-quired new meanings under the influence of the Russian пионер and кадры.
Sometimes English words acquire additional meanings under the influence of related words having quite different roots, e.g.
the political meanings of shock and deviation have come from the Rus-sian ударный and уклон.

A semantic loan is a process of borrowing semantic meaning (rather than lexical items) from another language. One example
is the German semantic loan realisieren. The English verb "to realise" has more than one meaning: it means both "to make
something happen/come true" and "to become aware of something". The German verb "realisieren" originally only meant the
former: to make something real. However, German later borrowed the other meaning of "to realise" from English.

14. Etymological doublets

Some Scandinavian borrowings ousted native words in dialects. Since many of these words were of the same root a great
number of etymological doublets appeared, e.g. dag — dew, kirk — church, benk — bench, kist — chest, garth — yard, loup —
leap, etc.

Sometimes a word is borrowed twice from the same language. As the result, we have two different words with different
spellings and meanings but historically they come back to one and the same word. Such words are called etymological
doublets. In other words, two or more words in the same language are called doublets or etymological twins (or possibly
triplets, etc.) when they have the same etymological root but have entered the language through different ways. They differ to
a certain degree in form, meaning and current usage.
Etymological twins are usually a result of chronologically separate borrowing from a source language. In the case of English,
this usually means once from French during the Norman invasion, and again later, after the word had evolved.

e.g. warranty (гарантия) and guarantee.

Etymological doublets are two or more words of the same language having a common word as a source of their development.

Etymological doublets can also proceed from two dialectal forms of the same word, e.g., OEshare, OScscar. They may also be
the result of successive borrowing of one and the same word at different periods, e.g., travel, travail (from French), or of
different routs of development of the word in different meanings, e.g., flower and flour.

Many etymological doublets are due to shortening, e.g., espy (n) – spy; estrange (n) – strange; history – story.

15. Etymological hybrids

Words that are made up of elements derived from two or more different languages are called h y b r i d s . English contains
thousands of hybrid words, the vast majority of which show various combinations of morphemes coming from Latin, French
and Greek and those of native origin.
Thus, readable has an English root and a suffix that is derived from the Latin -abilis and borrowed through French. Moreover,
it is not an isolated case, but rather an established pattern that could be represent ed as English stem+-able. Cf. answerable,
eatable, likable, usable. Its variant with the native negative prefix un- is also worthy of note: un-+English stem+-able. The
examples for this are: unanswerable, unbearable, unforeseeable, unsayable, unbelievable. An even more frequent pattern is un-
+Romanic stem + -able, which is also a hybrid: unallowable, uncontrollable, unmoveable, unquestionable, unreasonable and
many others. A curious example is the word unmistakable, the ultimate constituents of which are: un-(Engl)+mis-(Engl)+-tak-
(Scand) +-able (Fr). The very high valency of the suffix -able [эbl] seems to be accounted for by the presence of the
homographic adjective able [eibl ] with the same meaning.

16. Folk etymology

Sometimes in an attempt to find motivation for a borrowed word the speakers change its form so as to give it a connection
with some well-known word. These cases of mistaken motivation received the name of f o l k e t y m o l o g y . The
phenomenon is not very frequent. Two examples will suffice: A nightmare is not ‘a she-horse that appears at night’ but ‘a
terrifying dream personified in folklore as a female monster’. (OE таrа ‘an evil spirit’.) The international radio-telephone
signal may-day corresponding to the telegraphic SOS used by aeroplanes and ships in distress has nothing to do with the First
of May but is a phonetic rendering of French m'aidez ‘help me’.
Sometimes change of meaning is the result of associating borrowed words with familiar words which somewhat resemble
them in sound but which are not at all related. This process, which is termed folk etymology, often changes the form of the
word in whole or in part, so as to bring it nearer to the word or words with which it is thought to be connected, e.g. the French
verb sur(o)under had the meaning of ‘overflow’. In English -r(o)under was associated by mis-take with round — круглый and
the verb was interpreted as meaning ‘enclose on all sides, encircle’ (MnE. surround). Old French estandard (L. estendere — ‘to
spread’) had the meaning of ‘a flag, banner’. In English the first part was wrongly associated with the verb stand and the word
standard also acquired the meaning of ’something stable, officially accepted’.
Folk-etymologisation is a slow process; people first attempt to give the foreign borrowing its foreign pronunciation, but
gradually popular use evolves a new pronunciation and spelling.