Etymograph

English

puttock

Puttock comes from Middle English puttock.

  1. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500puttock1
  2. Englishearliest quotation 1590puttock1

attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor

  1. 1 Wiktionary, English puttock
  2. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1590, Edmund Spenser, Book II, Canto XI: “Some like to hounds, some like to Apes, dismayd,…”.

Lineage

  1. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500puttockWiktionary, English puttock
  2. Englishearliest quotation 1590puttockWiktionary, English puttock. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1590, Edmund Spenser, Book II, Canto XI: “Some like to hounds, some like to Apes, dismayd,…”

Formed from ock

Proto-Semitic *ʔaḫw- ‘brother’

Arabic أَخ ‘brother’

English ock

The story

From Middle English puttock, puttok, potok, puttoc, of uncertain origin; perhaps representing an unattested Old English *putta (‘hawk’) + -ock; or perhaps from Old English *pūthafoc (literally “pout-hawk”), equivalent to pout (‘a kind of fish’) + hawk.uncertain The source flags this step as uncertain.

Full etymology on Wiktionary

Every English word from Middle English puttock

Today it means

noun Any of several birds of prey including the red kite, buzzard and marsh harrier

Sources

Sources: Wiktionary, “puttock”. By Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, via kaikki.org (dump of Oct 3 2026); text adapted and restructured. Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word. License.

Etymograph / Middle English puttock / puttock

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