Mylkynge

Part of speech: verb, noun

Definitions

1. Drawing milk from a cow, goat or other animal, as practised in medieval English farming
2. The act of extracting milk from the udder of a livestock animal by hand or by machine
3. The process of expressing milk from a dairy animal, an activity recorded in Middle English writing

Etymology: "Milking" as a verb meaning to draw milk from an animal comes from Old English "melcan", a word that also gave Modern English "milk" its verb form. The noun "milk" is much older in the language and goes back to Old English "meoluc", while "melcan" is the verb that gradually drifted away from that noun's spelling and sound. The "-ing" ending is the Old English present participle and verbal noun suffix, so "milking" as a noun for the act of drawing milk is simply the verb turned into a noun. Its use is so ordinary that it has rarely needed a story, which is why the record of its early appearances is thin.