wusc

Old English

wūsc m

The declension table below shows the inherited distribution of *sk according to Ringe: "medially *sk was apparently palatalized unless a back vowel followed; finally it was palatalized unless a back vowel preceded."^[1] However, in a word like wūsc the distribution could have been leveled in either direction by the literary period, as it is not nearly as simple as in words like disċ (“dish”) where it would have been neatly divided between singular and plural. In the case of the rhyming word tūsc, it was leveled at least by the Middle English period, producing Modern English tusk as well as Middle English and dialectical Modern English tush. Note that the modern noun wish is derived from the (much more frequent) verb and so does not provide evidence either way.

Declension of wūsc (strong a-stem)

^ Ringe, Donald, Taylor, Ann (2014) The Development of Old English (A Linguistic History of English; 2), Oxford: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 204