At 5:41:48 AM on Tuesday, January 24, 2012, Trond Engen
wrote:
> I've seen suggested that English 'fuck' was borrowed from
> ON *fukka < *fuðka. I don't think it would work as an
> internal English development from *fuþ-kan- or some such.
This was Piotr's scenario a few years ago:
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.
<
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/51677>
Brian