etymologizing , także: etymologising BrE

This popular etymologizing has had a powerful influence on the forms which words take.

Spook etymologists would rather invent a dramatic word origin than trace a word to its source, and it was such fanciful etymologizing that fired Mark Twain to pen his satirical derivation of Middletown from Moses: by "dropping the -oses and adding the -iddletown.