Kilt/Quilt lingual conflation

[Pinkrose]

So, my aunt wanted me to help in designing a Spiderman quilt from the scraps and extra of one she already made, but I kept finding my self having the opposite problem many have when referring to the kilt.
I kept calling it the Spiderman Kilt instead of the Spiderman Quilt.
We had good laughs over my newly acquired inability to say quilt.

[OC Richard]

I hear people refer to 'kilts' as 'quilts' quite often. It's a common thing in linguistics, where a familiar word is substituted for an unfamiliar one of similar sound.

In English we have 'Bridegroom'. What exactly does he 'groom'? Nothing actually, 'groom' just happened to be a familiar English word that sounded fairly similar to the old English word guma (cognate with human) which eventually only appeared in the combination brydeguma (pronounced 'bridegoom'). At one point people thought "What on earth is a 'goom'? Sounds sorta like 'groom' " and the pronunciation shifted.

'Muskrat' and several other words for animals are simply the closest you can come in familiar English words to the Native American words for these things.