Here the reduplication is only apparent, for the older form was to stick or snee, representing the Dutch verbs steken, to thrust, snijden or snijen, to cut. The initial of the first verb has been assimilated to that of the second—

"It is our countrie custome onely to stick or snee."

(Glapthorne, The Hollander.)

Reduplication is responsible for pickaback, earlier pickpack, from pack, bundle. The modern form is due to popular association with back.

PREFIXED CONSONANTS

Occasionally we have what is apparently the arbitrary prefixing of a consonant, e.g., spruce for pruce (p. [48]). Dapple gray corresponds so exactly to Fr. gris pommelé, Mid. Eng. pomeli gris, Ger. apfelgrau, and Ital. pomellato, "spotted, bespeckled, pide, dapple-graie, or fleabitten, the colour of a horse" (Florio), that it is hard not to believe in an unrecorded *apple-gray, especially as we have daffodil for earlier affodil, i.e., asphodel. Cotgrave has asphodile (asphodèle), "the daffadill, affodill, or asphodill, flower." The playful elaboration daffadowndilly is as old as Spenser.

FOOTNOTES:

[42]

"Nec sibi postilla metuebant talia verba,
Cum subito adfertur nuntius horribilis,
Ionios fluctus, postquam illuc Arrius isset,
Iam non Ionios esse, sed Hionios."