Marco Conceptual

‘fi eldfarer’ is too vague and makes little sense. More likely, -fare in it is a refl ex of an old suffi x that once meant ‘belonging or pertaining to,’ later ‘dweller, occupant.’ The fi eldfare is thus ‘fi eld bird.’ A refl ex of the same suffi x is present in Du ooievaar and G adebar (both mean ‘stork’) and OE sceolfor ‘cormorant.’ See also elver and heifer.

FILCH (1561?)

Filch is, most probably, an adaptation of G argotic fi lzen ‘comb through.’ OE gefylcan

‘mar-shal troops’ (> fi lch ‘beat, attack’) is a different word.

The Etymologies at a Glance

FINAGLE (1926)

Finagle is probably an extended form (a form with an infi x) of fi ggle (fi nagle = fi -na-gle), which,

in turn, is a phonetic variant of fi ddle ‘fi dget about.’ Figgle is a frequentative form of fi g, the likeliest etymon of fi dge (see fi dget). Another similar extended form is skedaddle.

FIT ‘song’ (800) and many more meanings; ‘array of soldiers’ (1400) and other meanings

All the words spelled fi t in Modern English are related. The basic meaning of the sound complex /fi t/ is ‘move back and forth; move up and down; make sporadic movements,’ as seen in fi tful and in the phrase by fi ts and starts. The other meanings, for instance, ‘division of a poem’ and ‘match, suit; be a good fi t; interval’ are derivative. Go fi tan ‘be in labor,’ Du

FLATTER (1386)

Flatter is one of many onomatopoeic verbs beginning with fl - and denoting unsteady or

light, repeated movement. Flutter and fl it are similar formations. The original meaning of

pleasant things.’ Flatter is not related to the adjective fl at. It is not a borrowing of L fl ata@re

‘make big’ or of F fl atter. The French verb may be a borrowing from Middle English, but its history is unclear.

FUCK (1503)

Germanic words of similar form (f + vowel + consonant) and meaning ‘copulate’ are nu-merous. One of them is G fi cken. They often have additional senses, especially ‘cheat,’ but their basic meaning is ‘move back and forth.’ As onomatopoeic or sound symbolic forma-tions, fi ddle (v), fi t, and fi dget belong with fuck. Most probably, fuck is a borrowing from Low German and has no cognates outside Germanic.

GAWK (1785, v; 1867, sb)

Gawk and gawky belong with several English, Dutch, and German words designating fools,

simpletons, and awkward persons and their actions. It belongs with E geck, from Dutch, and geek, presumably from Low German. The history of gawk is inseparable from the his-tory of gowk, an English refl ex of the Scandinavian bird name gaukr ‘cuckoo.’ However,

onomato-poeic formation with the structure g-k. Gawk ‘fool; stare stupidly’ was not derived from the dialectal adjective gawk ‘left (hand),’ believed mistakenly to be a contraction of its synonym

to ‘left.’ Nor was gawk formed on the base of the Scandinavian verb gá ‘stare,’ with the ad-dition of the suffi x -k. F gauche ‘clumsy’ is most probably a borrowing from Germanic; its infl uence on gawk is unlikely.

GIRL (1290)

Girl does not go back to any Old English or Old Germanic form. It is part of a large group

of Germanic words whose root begins with g or k and ends in r. The fi nal consonant in girl

is a diminutive suffi x. The g-r words denote young animals, children, and all kinds of

crea-tures considered immature, worthless, or past their prime. Various vowels may occur

be-The Etymologies at a Glance

tween g/k and fi nal r. ME girl seems to have been borrowed with a diminutive suffi x from Low German (LG Gör(e) also means ‘girl’). MLG kerle, OHG karl (both meant ‘man’), OI kerl

‘old woman,’ MHG gurre ‘old jade,’ and N dial gorre ‘wether, little boy; lazy person; glut-ton’ belong to the girl ~ Göre group. They are loosely related as similar onomatopoeic or sound symbolic formations.

HEATHER (1730)

Heather continues hadder, one of several similar-sounding words (for example, hadyr and hathir) that designated the plant Erica in Middle English. Its etymon is supposedly OI *haðr,

whose origin is unknown. Perhaps *hað- meant ‘hair’: heather is sometimes associated with shagginess. The vowel in heath goes back to *ai, which, according to the rules of Germanic ablaut, cannot alternate with *a in *haðr. Consequently, heather and heath are unrelated de-spite their similarity and the existence of the German word Heidekraut ‘heather,’ literally

‘heath grass.’

HEIFER (900)

Most probably, ea and o in heahfore, the earliest recorded form of heifer, were short, which excludes a connection between heifer and OE he@ah ‘high.’ Old English seems to have had the word *hægfore ‘heifer.’ The fi rst element (*hæg-) presumably meant ‘enclosure’ (as do haw and hedge), whereas -fore was a suffi x meaning ‘dweller, occupant’ (see elver and fi eld-fare). By regular phonetic changes, *hægfore became *hæhfore and heahfore. In some dialects,

the fi rst group and the pronunciation of the second. E dial hekfore has the same structure as

*hægfore (heck means ‘rail; fence; gate’).

HEMLOCK (700)

The earliest known forms of hemlock are OE hymblicæ and hemlick. Besides LG Hemer and

means ‘poison.’ The origin of -lock is less clear, but an association with lock, whether the verb or the noun, is late. A probable etymon of hemlock is *hem-l-ig, perhaps a variant of

‘hemlock’ and OE ı@fi g ‘ivy.’

HENBANE (1265)

The fi rst element of henbane is hen- ‘death.’ This plant was originally called henbell, with -bell possibly traceable to belene, the Old English name of henbane. When the meaning of hen- had been forgotten, -bell was replaced with bane ‘murder, death.’ From a historical point of view, henbane is a tautological compound ‘death-death.’

HOBBLEDEHOY (1540)

The original form of hobbledehoy seems to have been *Robert le Roy, one of the many names

of the Devil. Later the popular form Hob replaced Rob. The same hob- appears in

yielded hobbert-de-hoy, apparently because the names of demons often contained -de- (-di-)

or -te- (-ti-), as in Flibbertigibbet and Hobberdidance. Folk etymology substituted hobble- for

The Etymologies at a Glance

the meaningless element hobbert-, and the resulting compound hobbledehoy was associated with an unwieldy person. See ragamuffi n for a similar development from the Devil’s name to a derogatory name of a young man.

HOREHOUND (1000)

Hore- in horehound (< OE ha@re hu@ne) means ‘white’ (< ‘hoary’). One of the meanings of Gmc

*hu@nseems to have been ‘black.’ Possibly, OE hu@ne was at one time the name of Ballota nigra, and ha@re was chosen to modify hu@ne when hu@ne began to designate Marrubium vulgare. Fi-nal -d appeared in horehound in Middle English, perhaps because horehound was confused with alyssum, a plant whose name suggested that it could cure hydrophobia. Words like

develop-ment of -houn to -hound.

HUGGER-MUGGER (1529)

Hugger-mugger remains a word of unclear origin mainly because we do not know whether

-mugger has been coined to rhyme with hugger- or is traceable to an ascertainable etymon (with -hugger added as a nonsense word for rhyme’s sake) or whether each element of the compound has its own etymon, so that the two were combined later and perhaps infl u-enced each other’s phonetic shape. Hugger-mugger has numerous variants, with -k-, -g-, and -d-, and it cannot be decided which of them is original and in need of an explanation.

Hugger- has so far defi ed attempts to etymologize it (its derivation from huddle is unlikely),

whereas -mugger is probably related to mooch (? < *my@can). See curmudgeon and mug.

Therefore, a search for the origin of hugger-mugger should probably begin with -mugger rather than -hugger. See mooch for the history of the root *my@c- and its variants.

IVY (800)

OE ı@fi g has established cognates only in German (Efeu; OHG ebah and ebahewi) and Dutch