• The origins of the word were in a form of ground meat dish originating from
Hamburg,
Germany. The bracketing of the original was
hamburg‧er, but after its introduction into the
United States, it was soon factorized as
ham‧burger (helped by
ham being a form of meat). This led to the creation of the independent suffix
-burger: chickenburger, fishburger, etc. In the original etymology,
burg was town and
burger was a resident, or something related to the town; after refactorization it becomes a chunk of meat for a sandwich, although a hamburger does not contain ham. • The English word is a
loanword from French, where it was formed by combining the adverb (meaning "beyond") with the suffix , rendering a bracketing of
outr‧age and a meaning of "beyondness" (from what is acceptable). The rebracketing as a compound of
out- with the noun or verb
rage has led to both a different pronunciation than the one to be expected for such a loanword (compare ) and an additional meaning of "angry reaction" not present in French. • The English , from
Greek heliko- ("turning") and
pteron ("wing"), has been rebracketed to modern
heli‧copter (as in
jetcopter,
heliport). • (from Greek
kubernān and
-ētēs) has been split into
cyber‧netics (as in ). • contains the prefix
prosth(o)-, which arose by misdivision of into
prosth- and
-etic. The word comes from Greek
pros ("in front of") and
thē-, the
root of the verb
tithēmi ("I place"). • The dog breed (a cross between a
Labrador Retriever and
Poodle) has been rebracketed to
Labra‧doodle, leading to the
-doodle suffix in other Poodle crossbreeds such as the
Goldendoodle and Aussiedoodle. • The word derives from (itself a junctureless rebracketing of Arabic
al-kuḥl) and . Words for other addictions have formed by treating as a suffix: , , etc. • In Romance languages, repeated rebracketing can change an initial
l to an
n (first removing the
l by analyzing it as the definite article
l, and then adding
n by rebracketing from the indefinite article
un), or the reverse. Examples include: • Latin *
libellu ("level") becoming
nivel in Portuguese, Romanian, and Spanish, and
niveau in French. • Latin
unicornis ("unicorn") became
licorne in French, via
unicorne >
une icorne (a unicorn), and finally, with juncture loss, ''l'icorne
(the unicorn) > licorne''. • In
Swahili,
kitabu ("book") is derived from
Arabic kitāb (). However, the word is split as a native Swahili word (
ki- +
tabu) and declined accordingly (plural
vitabu). This violates the original
triliteral root of the original Arabic (
K-T-B). • Many words coined in a scientific context as neologisms are formed with suffixes arising from rebracketing existing terms. One example is the suffix
-ol used to name
alcohols, such as
methanol. Its origin is the rebracketing of
al‧cohol as
alcoh‧ol. The word
alcohol derives from the Arabic
al-kuḥl, in which
al is the definite article and
kuḥl (i.e.,
kohl) is based on the Semitic triliteral root ''
. The suffix -ome
, as in genome, is occasionally suggested as being a rebracketing of chromo‧some
as chromos‧ome'', but see discussion at
Omics asserting a derivation from other, similar coinages. • In
Scottish Gaelic, the
definite article is pronounced run together with vowel-initial nouns without audible gap, similar to
French. This union has provided a rich source of opportunities for rebracketing. Historically the article's various case-, number-, and gender-specific forms ended in either a vowel, a nasal or an , the latter later becoming an over time. Over time, the last syllable of the article was either eroded completely or weakened and partially lost, but where rebracketing had occurred, what had been the final consonant of the article came to be treated as the initial of the following noun. Example: an inghnean ( *(s)indā inigenā) gave rise to an alternative form an ighean (the girl) this in turn becoming an nighean. As a second, more extreme example, the Scottish Gaelic words for
nettle include neanntag, eanntag, deanntag, and even feanntag. In addition, many forms of the article cause grammatically conditioned
initial consonant mutation of the following noun. The original cause of this mutation in the
Celtic languages was an across-the-board
change of pronunciation of certain non-
geminate consonants where they were either trapped between two vowels, or else between a vowel or certain other consonants. Mutation gave rise to yet more possibilities for reanalysis, the form feanntag mentioned earlier possibly being one such example. Calder 'A Gaelic Grammar' (1923) has a useful list. == Examples of false splitting ==