fox

English fox comes from Old English fox, from Proto-West Germanic *fuhs, from Proto-Germanic *fuhsaz, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *púḱsos, possibly related to *puḱ- meaning 'tail.'

Beyond its animal sense, fox later gained figurative use: Isaiah Berlin's 1953 essay 'The Hedgehog and the Fox' turned it into a philosophical type, and in the pre-NATO military spelling alphabet, Fox stood for the letter F and shorthand for 'to fire.'

It shares a root with Sanskrit púccha, meaning 'tail,' suggesting the animal may have first been named for that one distinctive feature rather than its cunning.