A small amphibian that looks a bit like a lizard but lives both in water and on land. Newts usually have moist skin and long tails.
From Middle English 'ewte' or 'efte'; over time, people started saying 'an ewte' which was reinterpreted as 'a newt'. This kind of sound-shift mistake is called 'rebracketing'.
The 'n' in 'newt' actually jumped over from the word 'an'—'an ewte' slowly became 'a newt'. This same process turned 'a napron' into 'an apron' and shows how everyday speech can reshape words over centuries.
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