Hic

A funny little conversation took place in my French class yesterday. It all started with the word 'hic', used in French to mean a 'snag', in the same way that we use 'hiccup' (or 'hiccough', though not sure my teacher was convinced by the spelling from the pronunciation). But it's not short for 'hiccup', that's an English word, after all. Instead it apparently comes from the Latin, hic, meaning 'here'. Which seems a bit strange as in the sentence 'Voilà le hic', that's the job of 'Voilà'. Anyway. *Gallic shrug*(If you know otherwise about its etymology, let me know.) So, the French word for 'hiccough' is 'hoquet', or perhaps that should be the other way round, as I think we took the word from them. Still, that in turn has another, musical meaning – hoquet or hocket is when a melody alternates between two voices in, I suppose, a kind of hiccupy way. But surely 'hoquet' doesn't come from the Latin 'hic', but from the onomatopoeic sound of a hiccup. How strange then that both hic and hiccup have come to mean the same thing. Or is that too much of a coincidence and a muddle?