Paronymic attraction
In etymology, including onomastics, paronymic attraction is the distorting effect exerted on a word by one of its paronyms (that is, a quasi-homonym). Paronymic attraction is the origin of many names. A common phenomenon, paronymic attraction is usually expressed through the replacement of a word whose meaning is not understood by a term designating a name (common or proper) or a common concept.
See also
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/7/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.