Éyoù je peux trouver un paraerreurs?

Thanks to a discussion of portmanteau words in aadroma's journal, the scales have fallen from my eyes and I see that all this time I've had the wrong para in parasol and parapluie. I read the first word as "for (para) sun (sol)" and never thought too long on hard on why it should be para in French as well instead of pour as one would expect given the free forms of the prepositions.

In reality, this is a form of Latin parare "prepare" (which by mediaeval times has acquired the secondary meaning of "defend from"). So parasol is really "it protects from [the] sun". Why then the second a when the expected form in French would be *paresol? (Cf. pare-soleil "visor".) The OED suggests that, despite the fact that parasol is first attested in French, it may have been influenced by a pre-existing Italian or Latin formation. Once that and a few other parallel cases known to be borrowed from Italian (e.g. paravent, parapet) became established, then the element para- was extended to new compounds such as parapluie and parachute.

Given what a fan I am of these Romance verb-noun compounds, it cheers me to suddently discover so many more--and hidden in plain view to boot!