Wurdahuzdą: Proto-Germanic dictionary

suffix noun masculine a-stem forms masculine diminutive, hypocoristic, or affective nouns, especially names of animals, plants, young creatures, and small or familiar concrete objects Uncertain. It likely continues either pre-Germanic *-ug-o-s or a degeminated velar *-k- < *-kk- formation (either via Kluge’s Law or “expressive gemination”). Parallel formations include *-akaz and *-ikaz. Kluge 1899: 30–33 notes the diminutive, animal name, and personal name formations with *-k-, while Krahe and Meid 1969: 211–16 group these with general *-k- suffixes, noting that they are especially common in animal names, plant names, concrete nouns, feminine formations, diminutives, pet names, and other emotionally colored formations, above all in the Low German–Dutch and Anglo-Frisian areas, though also elsewhere in Germanic. They argue that Proto-Germanic *-k-can have two historical sources: some instances may be from inherited Proto-Indo-European *-g-, while others may reflect unshifted substrate *-k-, especially in North Sea Germanic words with opaque etymology and suspicious initial *p- (which is rare in PIE). Olsen 1999: 584–88 compares Classical Armenian -ուկ, which may be Iranian or inherited, and notes that if Armenian and Germanic are connected, both appear to reflect a voiced stop counterpart to the more common voiceless *-k- of comparable Indo-European diminutives; she suggests either generalization from thematicized consonant-stem variants or "expressive gemination" *-kk- as possible explanations. Functional, but not necessarily regular phonological, comparanda include Sanskrit -क and Ancient Greek diminutive formations in -ισκος.