摘要：This panchronic sketch of so me aspects o f the syntax and semantics of the Hungarian verb(s) eszik/megeszik/ megesz " eat" partially co mplements my earlier paper on the cognate Ob -Ugric (Mansi and Khanty) verbs with the same basic meaning (Sherwood 1994-1995). Indeed, an important major goal of the paper is to supply much-needed additional support for the existence of a historic Ugric node in the Uralic (Finno -Ugric) family tree from the (hitherto underrepresented) semantic domain. An additional goal is to suggest ho w, and why, the very restricted realizations at the morphological and syntactic level of the verb megesz, in particular, iconically mirror its highly restricted semantics, which has nevertheless had a new lease of life recently. An integral part o f the paper is a proposal concerning how the meaning "have sexual intercourse" may well have been represented in Hungarian prior to its adoption of the euphemistic Turkic lo an basz(ik)
