English Folk "people" is derived from a Germanic noun *fulka meaning "people" or "army" (i.e. a crowd as opposed to "a people" in a more abstract sense of clan or tribe). The English word folk has cognates in most of the other Germanic languages. Folk may be a Germanic root that is unique to the Germanic languages. although Latin vulgus, "the common people", has been suggested as a possible cognate.

Etymology

The Modern English word "folk", derives from Old English "folc" meaning "common people", "men", "tribe" or "multitude". The Old English noun itself came from Proto-Germanic "*fulka" which perhaps originally referred to a "host of warriors". Compare Old Norse "folk" meaning "people" but more so "army" or "detachment", German "Gefolge" (host), and Lithuanian "pulkas" meaning "crowd". The latter is considered to be an early Lithuanian loanword from Germanic origin, cf. Belarusian "полк" - "połk" meaning regiment and German "Pulk" for a group of persons standing together.

The word became colloquialized (usually in the plural "folks") in English in the sense "people", and was considered unelegant by the beginning of the 19th century. It re-entered academic English through the invention of the word folklore in 1846 by the antiquarian William J. Thoms (1803-85) as an Anglo-Saxonism. This word revived folk in a modern sense of "of the common people, whose culture is handed down orally", and opened up a flood of compound formations, eg. folk art (1921), folk-hero (1899), folk-medicine (1898), folk-tale (1891), folk-song (1847), folk-dance (1912). Folk-music is from 1889; in reference to the branch of modern popular music (originally associated with Greenwich Village in New York City) it dates from 1958. It is also regional music.

Cognates in other Germanic language

Folk has a cognate in almost ' every other Germanic language, all deriving from Proto-Germanic "*fulka''", some are listed below:

• Danish - folk
• Dutch - volk
• Afrikaans - volk
• Swedish - folk
• Frisian - folk
• Norwegian - folk
• Icelandic - fólk
• Faroese - fólk
• German - Volk
• Afrikaans - volk
• Scots - fowk

In all Germanic languages, the variant of "folk" means "people" or something related to the people.

Background

In German the word Volk can have several different meanings, such as folk (simple people), people in the ethnic sense, and nation.

German Volk is commonly used as the first, determing part (head) of compound nouns such as Volksentscheid (plebiscite, lit. "decision of/by the people") or Völkerbund (League of Nations), or the car manufacturer Volkswagen (literally, "people's car").