I thought English 'to buck' had more to do with 'buck' the young male deer.
Now that word must have a complicated history - Proto-Germanic *bukkaz,
*bukkon, Armenian buc 'lamb', Old Irish bocc 'he-goat', Old French bouc
'he-goat', Avestan bu:za 'he-goat', Sanskrit bukka 'he-goat'. (The Germanic
forms are Old English buc, Middle Dutch boc, OHG boc, ON bukkr, bokkr 'male
deer', OE bucca 'he-goat', ON bokki 'my good fellow, old buck'.)

Richard.

----- Original Message -----
From: "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
To: <Nostratica@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2003 1:38 PM
Subject: [Nostratica] Re: Eating, Cattle and Elbow (was: Hermes/=Mercury)


> >
> > Illich-Svitych has in his reconstruction of Nostratic
> > Proto-Nostratic **/bok/a/ "to run away"
> > Proto-Indo-European *bheug/bhegw- id.
> > Proto-Uralic *pok-tV- "to run"
> > Proto-Altaic *p[']Vk- "run"
> >
> > It occurred to me that the two senses of the root might be
> > reconciled, namely as "acknowledge defeat" (> "bow down",
> > "flee"),
> > cf Danish 'bukke' "bend", 'bukke under' "succumb, perish".
>
> And also that English 'to buck' is also a nice middle ground
> between "bend, flex" and "flee". Perhaps the original sense should
> be "struggling to get free"?
>
> Torsten