Present participle of hawk; selling goods loudly in public, or hunting with trained hawks. Also a surname, as in physicist Stephen Hawking.
From Middle English 'hauken', referring to hunting with hawks. For selling, it may derive from the bird's cry or from a separate Germanic root meaning 'to peddle'. The hunting and selling meanings developed independently but converged in English.
Hawking connects two seemingly unrelated activities - hunting with birds of prey and selling goods on the street - possibly because both involve loud calls and aggressive pursuit! Stephen Hawking's surname adds another layer, linking the medieval sport of falconry to modern theoretical physics about black holes and the universe.
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