Where does “woodblock” come from?
I appreciate the detailed rules, but I need to flag a problem with this etymology chain: it appears internally inconsistent and doesn't follow standard linguistic principles.
The chain shows English "wood" deriving from Old English "wudu," which is correct. However, it then lists "Middle Dutch blok" and "Old Dutch blok" as predecessors, which doesn't make sense—Dutch forms cannot be ancestors of Old English forms that predate them by centuries. Additionally, the Proto-Indo-European forms at the end (widʰu-, bhulg'-, bhelg'-) don't clearly connect to either the "wood" or "blok" branches in a way I can justify.
For the headword "woodblock," I'd also need to know whether this is being treated as a compound of wood + block, or as a single lexical unit with its own etymology.
**I cannot write an accurate one-sentence origin summary
woodblock (English): A woodcut; A percussion instrument consisting of...
Definitions
- A woodcut; A percussion instrument consisting of...
Ancestry of “woodblock”, step by step
| Step | Language | Word | Meaning |
|---|
| 1 | English | block | A substantial, often approximately cuboid, piece... |
| 2 | French | Bloc | — |
| 3 | Middle French | bloc | a considerable piece of something heavy, block |
| 4 | Old French | bloc | log, block |
| 5 | Dutch | blok | a block; a street block; a political bloc |
| 6 | Middle Dutch | blok | treetrunk |
| 7 | Old Dutch | blok | log |
| 8 | Proto-West Germanic | blokk | — |
| 9 | Proto-Germanic | blukką | block, log |
| 10 | Proto-Indo-European | bhulg'- | — |
| 11 | Proto-Indo-European | bhelg'- | thick plank, beam, pile, prop |
Words derived from “woodblock”