[…] the tendency to economy, in the very midst of its destructive action, is at the same time constructive. It begins with producing those very forms which it is afterward to mutilate and wear out. Without it, compound words and aggregated phrases would remain ever such. Its influence is always cast in favour of subordinating in substance what is subordinate in meaning, of integrating and unifying what would otherwise be of loose structure- in short, of disguising the derivation of linguistic signs, making them signs merely, and signs easy to manage […].
- Whitney (1875), Pag. 53

When phonetic corruption has disguised too much, or has swept away, the characteristics of a form, so that it becomes an exceptional or anomalous case, there is an inclination to remodel it on a prevailing norm. The greater mass of cases exerts an assimilative influence upon the smaller. Or, we may say, it is a case of mental economy: an avoidance of the effort of memory involved in remembering exceptions and observing them accurately in practice.
- Whitney (1875), Pag. 74