I ran across this word today and was struck by the fact that I couldn't think of a single related word in the English language (aside from the adverb and noun versions of the same word). I went to check the etymology, which is Latin: truculentus, apparently passed through the Middle French.
The first attestation of the word in English is from 1540, which may explain why it has no English cognates. Perhaps it didn't come over from the Anglo French in or just after 1066, but was brought over as a loan word during or just after the Hundred Years War. It could easily have been a common word among the Middle French-speaking knights who were regularly interacting with the English-speaking knights until the 1450s, and thus first written down in a source that survives to us around a hundred years after that.
A hundred years sounds like a big gap, but it's just for what happened to survive that we're aware of to put in our reference sources. A lot of records were lost in the Henry VIII period due to the destruction of Catholic monastic libraries. The word sounds like one Shakespeare would have liked, but I can't find that he used it.
It was a weapon like tree trunk.
ReplyDeleteClose to bat swinging barbarian
Truncheon? That’s from a different root (as your intuition tells you, the one that also roots “trunk” like a tree.)
ReplyDeleteThat s cause truncheons were made from trees. Maybe tree roots even. Gives it that spring mace.effect.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason all 3 are related and in use because secret police and mobs liked certain weapons.
You are a flame brand. A little pistol. Check root word for pistol.
English uses weapons as personal descriptions.