The Etymology of “Chincough”

Abstract

AS your correspondent (NATURE, October 21) points out, chincough has certainly nothing to do with “hiccough”; but has it anything to do with the French chien = a dog, as he supposes? Chincough is the softer English equivalent of the Scotch kink-host (Dutch, kink-hoest). Besides, the noun there is also the verb, to kink (O. Dutch, kinken = to cough), and even an Englishwoman, at least in the north, who calls the disease whooping-cough, will tell one when her child began to “kink” with its cough. My dictionary compares the word with the Anglo-Saxon “cincung” = a fit of laughter, and kink is sometimes also used in that sense, or in connection with any choking inspiratory spasm. Finally, there is nothing in the sound of whooping-cough to suggest a dog, though the cough of croup might do so.