Reconstruction:Latin/fluruncum

This Latin entry contains reconstructed terms and roots. As such, the term(s) in this entry are not directly attested, but are hypothesized to have existed based on comparative evidence.

Latin

Etymology

Metathesized from furunculus, perhaps thanks to a folk-etymology relating it to flōrem (“flower”), imagining abscesses as flowers blossoming on one's skin. The metathesis apparently occurred early enough to preserve /k/, at least on the underlying (phonemic) level, before the palatalization that would have altered it in much of Western Romance; cf. the descendants of non-metathesized furunculus.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /floˈronku/

Noun

*fluruncus m (Proto-Western-Romance)

1. inflammatory tumor, boil

Declension

	singular	plural
nominative	*/floˈronkos/	—
oblique	*/floˈronku/	*/floˈronkos/

Descendants

• North Italian:
  • Piedmontese: fioron, fioronc
• Gallo-Romance:
  • Catalan: floronc, floronco
  • Franco-Provençal: fluron
  • Gascon: hloronc, ehloronc, esloronc, holoronc
  • Occitan: floronc (several dialects)

    Provençal: fleironc, flaironc (probably influenced by derivatives of flagrāre)

  • Poitevin-Saintongeais: flleuron
• Ibero-Romance:
  • Aragonese: floronco, florongo, florunco

References

• AIS: Sprach- und Sachatlas Italiens und der Südschweiz [Linguistic and Ethnographic Atlas of Italy and Southern Switzerland] – map 685: “il foruncolo” – on navigais-web.pd.istc.cnr.it
• Alcover, Antoni Maria; Moll, Francesc de Borja (1963), “floronc”, in Diccionari català-valencià-balear (in Catalan)
• “furoncle”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012
• Walther von Wartburg (1928–2002), “fŭrŭnculus”, in Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch (in German), volume 3: D–F, page 912