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[OE] The etymological ideal underlying yoke is of ‘joining’ – here, of joining two animals together. The word came ultimately from Indo-European *jugom, which also produced Latin jugum ‘yoke’ (source of English conjugal, jugular [16], and subjugate [15]), Welsh iau ‘yoke’, Czech jho ‘yoke’, Sanskrit yugám ‘yoke’, etc. The prehistoric Germanic descendant of this was *jukam (borrowed into Finnish as juko), which evolved into German joch, Dutch juk, Swedish ok, Danish aag, and English yoke. The Indo-European form itself was derived from the base *jug-, *jeug-, *joug- ‘join’, which also produced Latin jungere ‘join’ (source of English join, junction, etc) and Sanskrit yoga ‘union’ (acquired by English via Hindi as yoga [19], which literally denotes ‘union with the universal spirit’).
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