Etymograph

English

trunk

Trunk comes from Middle English tronke ‘a tree trunk’, and goes back to Latin truncus.

  1. Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEtruncus‘a stock, lopped tree trunk’
  2. Old Frenchc. 842–1400tronc‘alms box, tree trunk, headless body’
  3. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500tronke‘a tree trunk’
  4. Englishearliest quotation 1590trunk

attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor

Earlier history uncertain.

Lineage

  1. Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEtruncus‘a stock, lopped tree trunk’
  2. Old Frenchc. 842–1400tronc‘alms box, tree trunk, headless body’
  3. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500tronke‘a tree trunk’
  4. Englishearliest quotation 1590trunk

Earliest quotation: 1590, Edmund Spenser, Book I, Canto VIII: “Large streames of bloud out of the truncked stocke…”

The story

For the verb, compare French tronquer, and see truncate.

Linked words

through Proto-Indo-European *twerḱ- ‘to cut’

sarcasm, sarcastic, sarcoma, retrenchment, trenchant, 14 more

through Latin truncus ‘a stock, lopped tree trunk’

trench, truncation, truncate, truncheon, 8 more

Today it means

noun The usually single, more or less upright part of a tree, between the roots and the branches.

Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word.

Etymograph / Latin truncus / trunk

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