Regularizing new formations...which (as the historian finds) disagree with the earlier structure of the form, are sometimes called 'popular etymologies'.
- Bloomfield (1935), a pag.417

So-called popular etymologies are largely adaptive and contaminative. An irregular or semantically obscure form is replaced by a new form of more normal structure and some semantic content - though the latter is often far-fetched.
- Bloomfield (1935), a pag.423