Colin Gorrie at Dead Language Society:
No, this is no hound. It’s just a dog.
But somehow, this word dog — a word that wasn’t even dignified enough to write down once in the entire history of English writing before the eleventh century — would come to be the normal English word for man’s best friend, almost displacing the older form hound.
Stranger still, we don’t know for sure where the word dog came from.
We do have some theories, though. But I’ll need the help of some pigs, some frogs, and even some earwigs to explain.
More here.
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