false splitting In English As demonstrated in the examples above, the primary reason of juncture loss in English is the confusion between "a" and "an". In Medieval script, words were often written so close together that for some Middle English scholars it was hard to tell where one began and another ended. The results include the following words in English: adder: Middle English a naddre ("a snake") taken for an addre. aitchbone: Middle English a nachebon ("a buttock bone") taken for an hach boon. another, formed by combining "an other" into one word, is sometimes colloquially split into "a nother" and a qualifier inserted as in "a whole nother issue". apron: Middle English a napron taken for an apron. auger: Middle English a nauger taken for an auger. chord: Middle English accord (harmony) taken for a cord, later influenced by "chord" (string), which has another etymology. decoy: Most commonly thought to stem from Dutch de kooi, in which de is the definite article and kooi means cage. An alternative theory is that the Dutch compound noun eendenkooi, earlier spelled eendekooi, meaning "duck decoy", from eend "duck" + kooi, was reanalyzed and split, in the process of being transferred to English, as een dekooi, in which een is the Dutch indefinite article. eyas: Middle English a niyas (from French niais from Late Latin nidiscus (from Latin nidus = "nest")) taken for an eias. humble pie: Middle English a numble taken for an umble (ultimately from Latin lumbulus, this is also an example of homorganicness). lone: Middle English al one (all one) taken for a-lone. newt: Middle English an eute (cognate with eft) taken for a neute. nickname: Middle English an eke name ("an additional name") taken for a neke name. the nonce: Middle English, for old English þen ānes (the one [occasion]). nuncle (dialectal form of uncle): Middle English mine uncle taken for my nuncle. omelette: Seventeenth-century English loanword from French, developed there via earlier forms amelette, alemette and alemelle from la lemelle ("the omelette") taken for l'alemelle; ultimately from Latin lamella ("blade"), perhaps because of the thin shape of the omelette (SOED). ought ["zero"]: Middle English a nought ("a nothing") taken for an ought. Ultimately distinct from Old English naught ("nothing"), of complex and convergent etymology, from na ("not") and wight ("living thing, man"), but cf. aught ("anything", "worthy", etc.), itself ultimately from aye ("ever") and wight (SOED). tother: Middle