On 2008-01-20 23:03, Brian M. Scott wrote:
> To account for <fuck> and Du. <vokken> 'to breed cattle' I
> prefer Miguel's suggestion, *peug^-.
I'd suggest a derivation ultimately from *peuk^- 'stick, punch,
puncture', hence various words meaning 'prick(ly), spruce' etc. Pokorny
gives *peug^- as a variant, but Gk. pugmé:, Lat. pugnus 'fist' (if
correctly assigned to the same etymon) may owe their /g/ to pre-nasal
voicing, frequent-to-regular in this position (both are thematic
derivatives of *peuk^-mn. 'boxing' [or the like]). My scenario is as
follows: a Class IV (originally an intransitive fientive?) stem in
Germanic developed in the following way: *puk^-nó:- > *fukko:- (via
nasal assimilation); its "etymological meaning" was, more or less,
'punch away'. Like many other such verbs in Germanic, it soon developed
a transitive meaning as well. In English, we would end up with
*fukko:jan- > OE *fuccan > you know what.
Piotr