From: dgkilday57
Message: 66081
Date: 2010-04-14
>Yes, but the OED does cite "pro lana pakkanda" from 1341. The old simplex was simply less common than compound verbs. The current sense of <pakken> can be related to one of the senses of English <pack>, 'to stow or transport goods and the like as a business'. Those in the packing trade not only packed stuff, they grasped and took stuff to someplace else.
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@> wrote:
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > Given the connection with wool and the Low German provenance, it is
> > plausible to regard 'pack' as borrowed from a Nordwestblock word
> > for 'fleece, wool', related to Greek <pókos> 'uncombed wool,
> > fleece; tuft of wool; sheep-shearing', from the Indo-European root
> > *pek^- (IEW 797). This same noun, IE *pók^os, became Gmc. *fahaz
> > and is reflected as ON <fæ´r> 'sheep'. One might expect NWB
> > *pakas. However, since the /a/ of the West Gmc. forms has not
> > undergone /j/-umlaut, the /kk/ cannot be derived from
> > /j/-gemination. That is, we cannot postulate an early WGmc *pakaz
> > leading to a Class I weak verb *pakjan, later *pakkjan, for it
> > would have become *pekkjan in Old Saxon and Old Dutch, whence
> > MLG/MD *pekken not <pakken>. Similarly, the nouns could not have
> > arisen from early WGmc *pakja- and *pakjan-. If the source was
> > NWB, the gemination very likely occurred in NWB, and a form already
> > having *pakk- was then borrowed into WGmc. Without pretending any
> > certainty about NWB morphology, I will guess that *pakas 'fleece,
> > wool' had the associated adjective *pakyas 'pertaining to wool',
> > which regularly became *pakkas, and was borrowed into early WGmc as
> > *pakkaz. This adjective was then substantivized as 'bundle or load
> > of wool', with a masculine or neuter noun subsumed, and this in
> > turn produced a Class II weak verb *pakko:n, later (in Ingvaeonic)
> > *pakko:jan, and a wk. m. noun *pakkan- 'woolly mass' vel sim.
>
>
> I know that the association Low Countries ~ wool trade comes easy to mind to Anglophones, but a slight semantic correction:
>
> 'pakken' is the standard Dutch, as 'packen' is the colloquial German (from Low German, note, no pf-) word for the general concept of "grasp, take" (Engl. 'pack' is Dutch 'inpakken', note the Lat. impaccare, not *paccare in the 1280 contract), not for some specialization of it as the word is used in English and the Scandinavian languages.
> http://www.systranet.com/dictionary/dutch-english/pak
> http://www.systranet.com/dictionary/dutch-english/aanpakken
> http://www.systranet.com/dictionary/dutch-english/inpakken
> http://www.systranet.com/dictionary/dutch-english/slag
> In Dutch, further, a 'pak' is a suit, ie an ensemble, as is German 'Tracht' (< tragen "carry"), and further, in Dutch you can get 'een pak slag' "a beating" (cf German 'ein Tracht Prügel', where otherwise Prügel = "stick, club, baton")Suits are more commonly woolen than wooden, so this sense would seem to support derivation from 'bundle of wool' rather than 'bundle of sticks'.
> http://dictionary.reverso.net/german-english/Pr%C3%BCgel
> (< MHG brügel "piece of wood" says DEO)
> so I suspect we are dealing with our old friend *bak- "stick (of wood)" here, that the original sense of the noun was "bundle" as in Dutch, and that the specialized sense as in English 'pack' spread with Hansa and Dutch trade.
> > When mercantilism reached the Low Countries, all three nounsI misused the term 'mercantilism', and I stand corrected.
> > *pakkaz, -am, -an were used more or less interchangeably in the
> > wool trade. Of course, other scenarios are possible. I am merely
> > trying to establish such an etymology as plausible.
>
> Mercantilism
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism
> with its emphasis on protection of the domestic market was an attempt by other nations, in particular France, to protect themselves against the promiscuous trading of the Dutch. I don't think there was a time before which the Dutch didn't trade.