Did you know that, back in the mists of time, fist and punch come from the same root? It’s true (probably). But not the punch you’re probably thinking of. The other one.
Also, by the way, it is the fist you’re probably thinking of, and not the other one.
Oh, did you know about the other fist? To start with, it’s pronounced like “feist” (as in “feisty”) – which, in fact, it’s closely related to. You see, feisty started as a reference to a kind of dog: one full of spirit. Or of vapours. Noxious ones. A feist was (and is) a spunky or belligerent dog, but it first of all meant a dog that fists. By which I mean the fist that sounds like feist. Which means, brace yourself, ‘fart’. The source is the Old English verb fisten, with a long i; an alternate spelling led to feist. There are similar words in other Germanic languages: Dutch veest (fart, noun), Swedish fisa (fart, verb), German Fist (quiet wind)…
But that’s not the word that’s related to punch, etymologically. Nor to the other punch, for that matter. Though, come to think of it, we can find a commonality of sense or effect between each pair of words… except the pair that’s related etymologically. Here, let’s call them fist1 ‘clenched hand’, fist2 ‘fart’, punch1 ‘strike with fist; make a hole’ (they’re the same word, sort of… see below), and punch2 ‘mixed beverage of juice and (usually) alcohol’. The match-ups are:
- fist1 and punch1: done with the clenched hand
- fist1 and fist2: adds an air of unpleasantness to a conversation
- fist2 and punch2: can make you queasy
- punch1 and punch2: can render you unconscious
- fist2 and punch1: an assault on the senses
- fist1 and punch2: derived from a root meaning ‘five’
Yes, that’s right: five relations of sense or effect, and one etymological relation meaning ‘five’.
You might already know that punch, the beverage, comes from the Hindi word for ‘five’. This is because the original beverage that had the name was made in India and had five ingredients. (Never mind that in the Caribbean their recipe for punch names four things in proportion: “one of sour, two of sweet, three of strong, four of weak” – e.g., lime, sugar syrup, rum, and water. In India the fifth ingredient was spice, and that’s also often added in the Caribbean.) The Hindi word comes from the Sanskrit word, which in turn comes from Proto-Indo-European, a root reconstructed as *pénkʷe (the asterisk before it means we don’t have documentary proof of it, it’s just reconstructed by deduction and inference). This root meant ‘five’ and ‘hand’ – because, of course, of the digits of a hand. It is the source of the words in pretty much every Indo-European language for ‘five’.
It is also – or, rather, I should say, it may also be – the source of English finger and English fist. The phonological changes involved are plausible but not inevitable; there are no competing conjectural derivations that I’m aware of. So we can take it provisionally that fist and punch (but not punch1, just punch2) are related. Also finger and punch as in “five-finger death punch” – but only if the death punch in question is an overly strong drink made with five fingers of rum.
By the way, the other punch – the one meaning ‘hit with a fist’ or ‘make a hole in’ – traces via Old French ponchon to Latin punctus, from pungo ‘I prick’. But the ‘hit’ sense also draws on an earlier form of punish.
There is, by the way, one word that ties together all four words, fist1, fist2, punch1, and punch2. It’s a name of a place that was known for drunkenness (punch2) and was struck and punished (punch1) – perhaps by the hand of God but anyway by the hand of nature (fist1) – and wiped out by an enormous mephitic eructation of the earth (fist2). And its name also means, etymologically (via the Oscan language, in reference to how many districts the place had), ‘five’. It’s Pompeii.
Sesquiotica 