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As I recall (and it's been several years since I read The Mother Tongue), he seemed to think this was the true history of the word.
I also learned in this book that there was a sort of linguistic battle over whether to use the French method for making a word plural (add an 's') or the German method (add 'en'). Interestingly enough, the countryside which favored the French approach won out over the cities who used the German.
But, it turns out, there are at least four words that still use the German 'en' method. You know them all and use three of them every day.
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