From: tgpedersen
Message: 51685
Date: 2008-01-21
>What's with the preserved -k-/-kk-?
> 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.