cinemaetymologymiddle-english
I just watched the movie A Knight's Tale, and the character Wat repeatedly threatens to "fong" people (as in "I'll fong you," clearly meaning some kind of bodily violence.)
There are claims around the internet that "fong" is an "actual word from old English" (sic, presumably meaning Middle English) meaning "to kick".
However, I can find no entry for it in the OED, nor in the Middle English Dictionary.
Is there any basis for the claim that "fong" is a Middle English word meaning "to kick"?
Nearly half of these words (not to mention others, like buoy) seem to be related to seafaring or fishing:
block, deck, hoist, leak, plug, pump, smelt, stern, trigger.
And one can imagine that many of the others might have come into the language through sailor's lingo.
Maybe you should narrow down the question to: how closely did Dutch and English sailors interact in the Middle Ages? Maybe fishermen moonlighted as smugglers back then, and got to know their Dutch counterparts fairly well. Or maybe some ships had multinational crews.
OED does place the etymology of "giddy" squarely as one possessed by a god.
Old English gidig insane, is shown by its guttural initial to be a graphic variant of gydig < prehistoric gudīgo- , apparently < Old Germanic gudom god n. and >int. The primary sense thus appears to be ‘possessed by a god, ἔνθεος ’; compare Old English ylfig insane, lit. ‘elf-possessed’, similarly < ælf elf n.1
Early alternate spellings include "gidie," "gidy," and "gidi."
By 1556, "gid" was a term for a brain illness in sheep, likely related to the implication of insanity. A source cited at 1745 offers "giddiness" or "gid" as a term for this disease:
The other Day you lost a Sheep by the Gid, or Giddiness.
Nothing I could find in OED appeared to indicate that "Gid" was a precursor of "God," though it seems to have been an alternate spelling at some points in time.
God:
Cognate with Old Frisian god, Old Dutch god (Middle Dutch, Dutch god), Old Saxon god (Middle Low German got, (inflected) gōd-, godd-)
According to Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, "gid" or "gyd" meant a poem, song, proverb, or riddle earlier than the meaning related to sheep illness.
Gid oft wrecen (a song oft sung) [recited], Beo. Th. 2135; B, 1065.
Best Answer
Yes, there's some basis for the claim. The Middle English Dictionary gives fongen (-en being an infinitive ending) with a bunch of meanings, the last being:
[link]
So, not exactly kick; and it's not the word's primary meaning (not even close); but I think it's enough to make it plausible that the filmmakers were aware of the word, and did not simply invent it coincidentally.