Weiteres zu "Vixen"
vor 9 Jahren
Aus „Spotlight“ No. 1, 2015
Back to the roots, Page 62
English “fox” and German “Fuchs” both stem from a Proto-Germanic root, fuh, which goes back to the Proto-Indo-European “puk”, meaning “tail”. (It’s clear what our distant ancestors considered the characteristic feature of a fox to be.)
This is a classic example of a regular historical sound shift (Lautverschiebung) from Proto-Indo-European to Proto-to Proto-Germanic called Grimm’s Law…….-
--Das führe ich jetzt nicht weiter, es erklärt nur die Veränderung der Konsonanten von “puk” zu Fox/Fuchs.--
..But let’s go to the word „fox“. Although it is less clear at first glance, German and English also share a related word for female fox: “Füchsin” and “vixen” (from Old English “fyxen”). This is the only surviving example in English of a word containing the Germanic feminine suffix “-in”. We also see ablaut, just as in German. The initial “v” is the result of a sporadic south-western English tendency to voice an initial (f) as (v).
Note: in colloquial North American English, the word “fox” is often used today to refer not to a wild animal, but to a sexually attractive woman. You would never call such a woman “vixen”. If you did, you’d be saying something entirely different: that she’s either spirited or quarrelsome (streitsüchtig).