Etymology

folk

F4O1L1K5

Today it means: A people; a tribe or nation; the inhabitants of a region, especially the native inhabitants. Full definition →

Middle English folk ← Old English folc ← Proto-West Germanic *folk
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folk · noun, adjective1

  1. Proto-Germanic*fulkaz
  2. Proto-Germanic*fulką
  3. Proto-West Germanic*folk
  4. Old Englishfolc
  5. Middle Englishfolk
  6. English todayfolk

From Middle English folk, from Old English folc, from Proto-West Germanic *folk, from Proto-Germanic *fulką, possibly from Proto-Indo-European *pl̥h₁-gós, from *pleh₁- (“to fill”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian Foulk, West Frisian folk, Dutch volk, German Low German and German Volk, Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish folk, Faroese and Icelandic fólk. Doublet of volk.

Folk · proper noun2

* As a German surname, variant of Volk (“people, tribe”). * As an English surname, variant of Foulk, related to the noun folk, thus cognate with the above.

Words from the same roots

Old Englishfolc all →

Folkestone

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.