Or maybe \"little sticky toes\"?<\/p>\n
'Tis the season for articles about mistletoe<\/a>, like this one: Rachel Ehrenberg, \"Marvelous Misunderstood Mistletoe<\/a>\", Knowable Magazine<\/em> 12\/18\/2020:<\/p>\n Some plants are so entwined with tradition that it\u2019s impossible to think of one without the other. Mistletoe is such a plant. But set aside the kissing custom and you\u2019ll find a hundred and one reasons to appreciate the berry-bearing parasite for its very own sake.<\/span><\/p>\n I was interested to learn about haustoria, epicortical runners, viscin, hyperparasitism, and so on — but then there's the etymology:<\/p>\n Their name derives from Anglo-Saxon words meaning \u201cdung-on-a-twig\u201d \u2014 typically the dung of birds, which eat the seeds and disperse them to new host plants.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I was curious about how to get from \"dung-on-a-twig\" to \"mistletoe\", so I turned to the OED.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The OED gives this etymology for the mistle-<\/em> part: (which it glosses as \"Now Scottish<\/em>: Mistletoe, Viscum album<\/em>; spec. mistletoe growing on oak\"):<\/p>\n Etymology:<\/strong> Cognate with West Frisian mistel<\/em> mistletoe, early modern Dutch mistel<\/em> mistletoe, birdlime (1599 in Kiliaan, who considers it a loanword < Saxon; Dutch mistel<\/em> mistletoe), Old Saxon mistil<\/em> mistletoe, birdlime (Middle Low German mistel <\/em>mistletoe), Old High German mistil<\/em><\/em> (Middle High German mistel<\/em> , German Mistel<\/em> mistletoe), Old Icelandic mistil<\/em>– (only in mistilteinn<\/em> mistletoe n.), Swedish mistel<\/em> mistletoe, Danish mistel<\/em> mistletoe (the Swedish and Danish forms are probably borrowings < Low German). Further etymology uncertain: perhaps < the Germanic base of mix <\/em>n.1, from the fact that the plant is propagated in the excrement of birds (compare quot. 1562 for mistle<\/em> berry n. at Compounds); or perhaps cognate with the Germanic base of mash<\/em> n.1, with reference to the stickiness of the berries; in both cases the second element is the Germanic base of the diminutive suffix -el<\/em> suffix.<\/p>\n As for the -toe<\/em> part, the OED's etymology for mistletoe<\/em> says that a twig\/toe eggcorn seems to have been involved:<\/p>\n Etymology: < mistle n.<\/em> + Old English t\u0101n<\/em> twig (see teanel n.). Compare Old Icelandic mistilteinn<\/em>, Swedish regional mistelten<\/em>, Danish mistelten<\/em>. As for the birdlime<\/em> part of mistle-,<\/em> I've always thought of birdlime<\/em> as \"a sticky substance spread on twigs to snare small birds\", and dictionaries<\/a> and encyclopedias<\/a> seem to agree with me. The Knowable article's \"dung\" idea might refer to the \"etymology uncertain\" connection to mix<\/em>, or it may have come from a mistaken inference that birdlime<\/em> refers to the whitish color of bird poop, which looks sort of like lime = calcium carbonate<\/a>.<\/p>\n In any case, I'm happy to learn about the \"early confusion\" between twigs and toes.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Or maybe \"little sticky toes\"? 'Tis the season for articles about mistletoe, like this one: Rachel Ehrenberg, \"Marvelous Misunderstood Mistletoe\", Knowable Magazine 12\/18\/2020: Some plants are so entwined with tradition that it\u2019s impossible to think of one without the other. Mistletoe is such a plant. But set aside the kissing custom and you\u2019ll find a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[178],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-etymology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49761"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49767,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49761\/revisions\/49767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe loss of final -n<\/em> in \u03b1. forms arises from early confusion (already in late Old English) of the second element with Old English t\u0101n<\/em> , plural of t\u0101<\/em> toe (see toe n.<\/em>). The \u03b2. forms show the normal development of the Old English compound with weakening of the final syllable due to low stress. The \u03b3. forms are probably contractions of the \u03b2. forms. For the voicing of s<\/em> to z<\/em> in combination with a voiced consonant, as evidenced by occasional forms with z<\/em> , see E. J. Dobson Eng. Pronunc. 1500\u20131700<\/em> (ed. 2, 1968) II. \u00a7364.<\/p>\n