English
trunkfish
From trunk + fish.
Latin truncus ‘a stock, lopped tree trunk’
Old French tronc ‘alms box, tree trunk, headless body’
Middle English tronke ‘a tree trunk’
English trunk
Proto-Indo-European *piskós
Proto-Germanic *fiskaz
Proto-West Germanic *fisk
Old English fisċ
Middle English fisch ‘an animal that inhabits the water or the meat…’
English fish
Today it means
noun Species of genera Lactophrys and Rhinesomus (in boxfish family Ostraciidae).
Sources
Sources: Wiktionary, “trunkfish”. 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 / trunkfish