porcupine: [14] The porcupine is etymologically a ‘spiny pig’. Its name was coined in Vulgar Latin as *porcospīnus from Latin porcus ‘pig’ (source of English pork) and spīnus ‘spine’. It came to English via Old French porc espin. It underwent all sorts of traumas (portpen, porpoynt, porpentine – the form used by Shakespeare: the ghost of Hamlet’s father speaks of the ‘quills upon the fretful porpentine’ – porkenpick, porpin, etc) before finally settling down in the 17th century to porcupine, and around 1700 the fanciful variant porcupig was coined. => pork, spine[porcupine etymology, porcupine origin, 英语词源]