Re: Accurate history vs. Fish stories

It is not that I did not remember the posting from which you have =
quoted. What you are responding to is a quotation from the Online =
Etymological Dictionary, which does not list the OED among its sources. =
I find the same derivation of the English word "crouch" from the Old =
French "crochir" in Walter W. Skeat's "Etymological Dictionary", =
together with the suggestion that the latter derives from the Late Latin =
"croccum, acc. of croccus, a hook."

Peter Stewart...

What Skeat says, under "crouch", is that this word (defined as 'bend low
with general compression of the body') comes from the late Middle English
"cruche, crouche", possibly from the Old French "crochir".

If you look under "cross" you will find 'O[ld] F[rench] "croix" was adapted
in M[iddle] E[nglish] as "cr(e)oiz", later "crois", "croice" (XIII-XV
[centuries]). The L[atin] word was adapted (with lengthened vowel) in
Germ[an] as O[ld E[nglish] "cruc", M[iddle] E[nglish] "crouch" (whence
"crouched" adj[ective] wearing a cross, esp[ecially] in "Crouched", later
"Crutched", Friars'.

That is what I have been saying.

Peter Stewart