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ABSTRACT. This article explores the origin of English dog (OE. *docga), generally regarded as a word of unknown origin. It is argued, on the basis of its morphology, that the word is a hypocoristic derivative of dox, an Old English colour adjective. The article suggests that the relation between OE. frox and frocga 'frog' is not an isolated irregularity but an example of a derivational process represented also by dox: *docga and possibly by other such pairs in Old English (e.g. fox: *fogga).
Introduction
Authors of etymological dictionaries of English, from Skeat (1879-1892) onwards, deal with the origin of dog brusquely in such terms as "root unknown" (Skeat) or "of obscure origin". In fact, historians of English seem to have lost interest in the word, at best commenting on its form, which, as will be shown, suggests some kind of diminutive formation (Hogg 1982:196,1992:43). Since no etymological source suggests itself, dog has apparently been shelved together with other words of dubious derivation. In the following sections I shall challenge this agnostic attitude.
There is certainly a good deal of truth in Yakov Malkiel's rather pessimistic assessment of the status of etymology in modern linguistics (Malkiel 1993:168):
"The very term 'etymology' has virtually disappeared from announcements of journal notes and articles, or from series of academy memoirs. For a young scholar, it is at present inadvisable, at least for career purposes in the teaching field, that he or she be known as aiming to qualify mainly as an etymologist, the way his next-door neighbours may safely declare their eagerness to pass off as phoneticians, phonologists, semanticists, pragmaticists, syntacticians, and the like.
Now it is, indisputably, desirable that one should not cultivate etymology in strict isolation. Its study can be very fruitfully combined with inquiries into models of regular sound change, phonosymbolism, morphology (with particular emphasis on derivation and compounding), and so on; even a certain partnership with the fashionable probing of newly coined words might be highly commendable. But society is in error if it, directly or indirectly, encourages, or even provokes, the publication of reference books which, practically by definition, should contain no entirely new facts or ideas on the side of word origins, but instead, provide only novel approaches to relationships established elsewhere,...