Re: Frisians & Jutes

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Arnaud Fournet" <fournet.arnaud@...>
wrote:

>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Andrew Jarrette" <anjarrette@...>
>
> >> >> feefokker "rancher"
> >>
> >> > Literally "cattle-breeder" (the English profanity
> >> > apparently meant simply "to breed")
> >>
> >> I don't know of any evidence that it ever had that meaning
> >> in English.
> >>
> >> Brian
> >>
> > Yes, I was extrapolating from Dutch to English: I just remember
> > reading somewhere that <fokken> in Dutch, or some variety of Dutch,
> > means "to breed (cattle)", and that the English word comes from the
> > Dutch word in this sense. <Fuck> (hope this is not too vulgar for
> > Cybalist, I am citing it objectively) is not in the Oxford English
> > Dictionary, 1971 edition (I was quite surprised to find this), but
> > Webster's relates it to Middle Dutch <fokken> "to strike, copulate"
> > and dialectal Swedish <fock> "penis". So although I don't know
> > anything about the word's history in English, from these two cognates
> > I would guess (now that I know about the MDu and SW dial. words) it
> > always had the meaning "copulate" in English.
> >
> > Andrew
> >
> ========
>
> Does "feefokker" mean "fuck the tax-gatherer" ?
>
> I'm a bit lost in your "tax-copulation".
>
> Arnaud
>

I don't know whether you're joking, but you can see above at the top
of this message that I said that Frisian <feefokker> means
"cattle-breeder" literally. (<fee> = German <Vieh> "livestock", Dutch
<vee> "cattle", from PGmc *fehu "livestock, cattle; property; money"
(OE <feoh> in all these senses (and not the source of modern English
"fee", which is from (Anglo-)French, though it ultimately goes back to
the Germanic word), Gothic <faíhu> only "money"). From what I've read,
<fokken> means <to breed> in certain varieties of modern Dutch, and I
inferred that so does the Frisian word. I imagine it developed this
meaning from the older "copulate" (when applied to animals).

Andrew