Originally Posted By: twosleepy


Controversial postulation follows: Shouldn't prescriptivism apply to etymologies as well as the words themselves? Then you must accept "folk etymology" as "real", because users of it have already done so. :0)


Sounds like you really meant descriptivism and no, it doesn't. Descriptivism says that you accept terms such as 'Jerusalem artichoke" which were formed by folk etymology but that doesn't mean that you have to accept the notion that they are artichokes or have anything to do with Jerusalem.