henchman

Middle English hengestman, hengsman, hanseman, henshman "high-ranking male servant," probably from hengest "horse" + man man entry 1; hengest going back to Old English hengest, hencgest, hengst "stallion, gelding," going back to Germanic *hangista- (whence also Old Frisian hengst, hangst "horse," Middle Dutch henxt "stallion," Old High German hengist "gelding"), with a variant *hanhista- (whence Old Icelandic hestr "stallion"), going back to pre-Germanic *konkisto-, of uncertain origin

Note: In Middle English, hengest "horse" is marginally attested, last occurring (as hængest) in Layamons's Brut, composed probably at the beginning of the thirteenth century. On the other hand, the compound hengestman and its numerous variants are apparently not documented before the 1340's, first in a Latin context. This curious gap of about a century and a half has led to speculation that, since hengest was not in use and no longer available for compounding, hengestman originally had nothing to do with horses; hypothetically, the compound was borrowed from a Continental source, perhaps a surname. The issue is discussed by Anatoly Liberman in his Oxford University Press blog posts "The henchman's dilemma" and "The hedging henchman and his hidden horse" (August 25 and September 3, 2021). Liberman recapitulates favorably a hypothesis of the autodidact philologist Frank Chance, argued (in opposition to the Anglist Walter Skeat) in the 1886-87 numbers of Notes and Queries, that one or more German surnames were the source of henchman. – The two Germanic variants *hangista- and hanhista- represent outcomes by Verner's Law of two accentual variants (in pre-Germanic) *konk-istó- and *kónk-isto-. The first form appears to be the superlative, with the suffix *-istó-, of an adjective *konk-; *konk-istó-, meaning "best at jumping, quickest," would then have been nominalized as a generic name for a horse. The variant *kónk-isto- has simply generalized the accent of the base adjective. The form *konk- has been compared with Lithuanian šankùs "quick, nimble," and šankìnti "to make (a horse) jump." G. Kroonen (Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic) considers the comparison questionable, while the editors of Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen accept it and propose that *konk- is based on a nasal present *ḱh₂-n-k- of an Indo-European verbal base *ḱeh₂k- "jump, spring," evident also in Lithuanian šókti "to jump, leap, dance."