Reconstruction talk:Proto-Germanic/fukkōną
Reconstruction[edit]
I'm not entirely sure the two roots aren't related, possibly "to blow" came from the meaning "to be assaulted by wind", but there are many words of this shape that relate to wind, so I separated them here.
The root *pewg- (“to strike, assail”) isn't mentioned anywhere, I think. I assume that Latin pugnus (“fist”) is derived from it, possibly originally meaning "what strikes", while pungō (“to prick, sting”) probably comes from *pewḱ- (“to sting”), in which case they were secondarily associated by similar shape and meaning.
German and Dutch also show words with a similar shape meaning "to fool, make a fool", that might possibly have developed from "to assail" > "to bully" > "to make a fool", but it might be a stretch to associate them.
There are also the dialectal/obsolete English feak and feague, meaning "to beat, thrash", which I took to imply an original root *pewk/ḱ-, but the possible extra-Germanic cognates point towards *pewg-. Rather, I assume feak continues *faukōną, an o-grade iterative, which fits with dialectal Norwegian fauk (“fight”) and faukast (“to fight with one another”). Anglom (talk) 02:50, 3 March 2015 (UTC)