Pease

You’ve been saying pea wrong.

Split pea soup?

Nope.

Two peas in a pod?

Try again.

Pea-brain?

You don’t have to be a jerk about it.

Pea was originally pease. The small spherical seed or the seed-pod of the pod fruit was called a pease. Pease was singular.

“One pease, please.”

Peasen was plural.

“Two peasen in a pod.” Doesn’t have the same ring to it.

In etymology, this is called a back-formation.

Back-formation: the process of creating a new lexeme by removing actual or supposed affixes.

wikipedia

Now what the hell does that mean? That might be the most pretentious definition I’ve ever read. Lexeme? Actual or supposed affixes? Give me a break.

“Lexeme” is pretend-to-be-smart-guy talk for a word.

“Affixes” are the things you attach to words to make a new word or word form.

You put the letter s on the end of a word to make it plural. That s is an affix.

This should be the real definition of back-formation.

Back-formation: important when lifting heavy objects.

gotcha lmao

But actually.

Back-formation: the process of creating a new word because language is crazy, man.

my real definition

Pease was singular. But most people thought it was plural. Because, you know, there’s an s at the end. Makes sense to me. So, most people said pea and peas as being singular and plural, respectively. Hence “split pea soup” and “two peas in a pod.”

Everybody did this so now it’s correct.

We like to think that language has structure. For my fellow grammar Nazis out there, we desperately want language to have structure.

But it doesn’t. Language is collaborative and communal. If the majority says “pea” then that’s the word now.

Sorry pease, you had your chance and you blew it. They didn’t like you, I guess. I don’t know what you want me to say.

What’s that?

You have a message?

Wait, hold on. Let me find a pen.

Ah yes. Here it is.

Go ahead.

Really?

Interesting.

I never thought of it that way.

That’s very insightful of you, pease.

Yeah sure, I’ll tell them.

The message we can learn from pease is “things aren’t that serious.”

Words change. Definitions are malleable.

We should stop arguing and accept that pease can be pea.

Pease says everyone should know about the story of pease.

The world would be a better place…

If we had world pease.