fluruncus

Meaning

1. Proto Western Romancereconstructioninflammatory tumor, boil

Declension

Origins

Metathesized from furunculus, perhaps thanks to a folk-etymology relating it to flōrem (“flower”), imagining abscesses as flowers blossoming on one's skin. The metathesis apparently occurred early enough to preserve /k/, at least on the underlying (phonemic) level, before the palatalization that would have altered it in much of Western Romance; cf. the descendants of non-metathesized furunculus.