• ace_garp@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    …and when you take a detour, you are getting off your original tour. (Tour de France, tour of the countryside, etc)

    Hence, why you de-tour.

    Did everyone work this out at first glance? The etymology of ‘detour’ took me way too long.

    • oneiros@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      10 months ago

      Along these lines, I recently learned:

      Painstakingly is pains + takingly (as in “took great pains”), not pain + stakingly.

      Helicopter is helico + pter (“spiral wing”), not heli + copter.

      In linguistics, this phenomenon is called rebracketing.