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What is the most confusing misnomer you've seen? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 weeks ago by castiellon@lemmy.zip to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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Mine is "guinea pig" originating in andes (not guinea) and them being not-a-pig type, whole thing is just wrong.

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[–] Johnny_Arson@hexbear.net 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

That is wild lmao thank you for this post. One of my favorite bits of etymology trivia is the phrase "comparing apples to oranges" which means a false or meaningless comparison. But in fact while we call them oranges now, they were once called apples of the orange tree and the orange tree was named before the word orange became the name of the color and then the fruit.

So in a round about way the phrase sort of takes on the opposite of its colloquial meaning.