7. Pseudo-compounds

The words like gillyflower or sparrow-grass are not actually com­pounds at all, they are cases of fa1se etymo1ogy, an attempt to find motivation for a borrowed word: gillyflower from OFr giroflf, crayfish (small lobster-like fresh-water crustacean, a spiny lobster) from OFr crevice, and sparrow-grass from Latin asparagus.

May-day (sometimes capitalized May Day) is an international radio signal used as a call for help from a ship or plane, and it has nothing to do with the name of the month, but is a distortion of the French m'aidez 'help me' and so is not a compound at all.