-k

Yesterday, I learned the English word gawk, which means “to stare stupidly”. According to the OED, this word is the combination of the obsolete English gaw (meaning “to stare”) and the suffix -k, which has an intensive or iterative effect.

This fact is pretty intriguing to me, because I have never thought carefully about the letter k at the end of a word, let alone considered it as a suffix denoting something per se. Other good examples inclued talk from tale and smirk from smile.

Reference

• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-k#English