Umpire comes from the french nonper meaning not equal. Interestingly, many English words used to begin with ‘n’ but the letter was dropped through time because of blurring with the indefinite article ‘an’. Examples include (n)adder, (n)apple, (n)apron, (n)orange, (n)uncle.
Not sure about “apple” there. Most of the cognates in other languages don’t have a leading “n”, and neither does the reconstructed root. It might be that it gained an “n” in some places before losing it again, but “apple” seems to be the original.
“Uncle” presumably has the same sort of development, i.e. gained and lost if it gained it at all. In the one language where the cognate has gained an “n”, that “n” came from the definite article which ends with an “n” there.
If anything, “uncle” lost an “av” / “aw” at the start long before English was even conceived. If that had happened later, we might have “wuncle” from “an awuncle” being abbreviated as “a wuncle”, but that would be losing, not gaining the “n”.
Umpire comes from the french nonper meaning not equal. Interestingly, many English words used to begin with ‘n’ but the letter was dropped through time because of blurring with the indefinite article ‘an’. Examples include (n)adder, (n)apple, (n)apron, (n)orange, (n)uncle.
Not sure about “apple” there. Most of the cognates in other languages don’t have a leading “n”, and neither does the reconstructed root. It might be that it gained an “n” in some places before losing it again, but “apple” seems to be the original.
“Uncle” presumably has the same sort of development, i.e. gained and lost if it gained it at all. In the one language where the cognate has gained an “n”, that “n” came from the definite article which ends with an “n” there.
If anything, “uncle” lost an “av” / “aw” at the start long before English was even conceived. If that had happened later, we might have “wuncle” from “an awuncle” being abbreviated as “a wuncle”, but that would be losing, not gaining the “n”.