On 2008-01-23 01:49, ualarauans wrote:
> and even xok [shok] "shark" – English shark
This is quite commonly believed to be a late 16th-c. loan from Yucatec
into English, as the OED's first quotation comes from 1569. Even the
English Wikipedia gives this etymology (otherwise the earliest loan
showing an "intrusive" <r> and so testifying to the weakening of /r/ in
at least some English accents is juggernaut < Hindi jaganna:th, borrowed
about a century later).
However, Kurath's Middle English Dictionary shows a lone attestation of
the word in the Letters of Thomas Bekynton, Secretary to Henry VI and
Bishop of Bath and Wells (1442): "Circiter horam vijam in sero per
æstimationem navem sequebatur piscis vocatus le Shark, qui quidem piscis
percutiebatur bis cum uno harpingyren et recessit" (<harping-i:ren> =
'harpoon'). This resets the etymology of <shark> back to "unknown".
Piotr