Adrift

Well, this typo/misapprehension is a new one to me, from the generally irresistible Go Fug Yourself:

Lose the horrible midrift-level cardigan (an item which, for the record, works on approximately one person and she's working as a ballerina in the American Ballet Theatre somewhere)....

"Midrift"? Really?

The correct word, of course, is "midriff", which is from the obvious prefix "mid-", as in "middle", and--I did not know this, though now I do--"hrif", which is Old English (of course it is!) for "belly".

The second half of "midriff", by the way, is unrelated to other senses of "riff". But just because the word didn't leave any other survivors in its journey to the present doesn't mean people get to pretend it never existed.