#Linguistics crime of the day: the German word "Belletristik".
Germans needed to talk about "fiction literature authors" in the 1800s. They borrowed "belles-lettres" from French. They murdered the spelling into "Belletr" and attached a "-ist" suffix to make it: "Belletrist", the person who writes belles-lettres.
But oops, they forgot to first import the word for "fiction literature" itself. It's fine, just add another "-ik" suffix. "Belletristik", the field practiced by a "Belletrist".
The end result is so unhinged that as a french speaker I didn't even recognize the etymology before checking a dictionary. Someone deserves some language jail time for this.
@delroth Compare beletrystyka (https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beletrystyka) :)
@delroth Yup, it also migrated to Czech, Russian, Belarussian, Lithuanian, and Slovak have similar word for this meaning (according to wiktionary, which also claims that it came from German to Polish).
@delroth Also, if you haven't noticed, the double l got lost along the way :P
@robryk technically, for the 2nd time too...
@robryk oh god it's contagious