An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/Annotated/drücken

by Friedrich Kluge

drücken, drucken, ‘to press, oppress, hug, print,’ from Middle High German drücken, drucken, Old High German drucchen (compare Anglo-Saxon þryccan, ‘to press’), Middle High German drucken, an unmodified Upper German variant, has a specialised meaning in Modern High German. In Gothic the substantive would be *þrukks, the verb þrukkjan. Since the Middle High German verb drücken is equivalent to ‘to press, throng, oppress, thrust oneself,’ the meanings harmonise well with dringen, which is based upon an Aryan root trenk, while drücken would be derived from a root trek without the nasal; the kk of the theoretical Gothic form originated probably in kn. —