Pointed and Pungent

This started with a crossword clue.  Wife and I do the NYT puzzles.  Maybe it keeps the ageing mind active, not sure.  But in this case the clue made me pull up a word from deep memory.  Poignard.   It's a sort of dagger, one of many sharp stabby things used indiscriminately in Medieval times.  But other than sounding vaguely French, where does the word come from?

Keep in mind that words relating to basic human activities; eating, drinking, stabbing, tend to be invented early and reused often.  

Poignard comes from 14th Century French, Poignant, a word meaning sharp or pointed.  We still use this word for emotional moments.  Think Hallmark specials where Christmas gets saved and the lady protagonist finds True Love.  It descends from the Latin Pungere, meaning to literally poke or prick, or figuratively to "vex, grieve or trouble".  Pungere is closely related to Pugnus, meaning fist.  Hence Pugnacious and Pugilist.

The French word Pointe dates to about 1200, and combines two versions of Pungere.  Essentially it means both the point of a sword or other stabby object, and the smallest dot that you could make - either on paper or an opponent's skin - with something sharp.  Now of course we refer to a data point, or to the point - often hard to identify - of a discussion.

Pungent survives today as a sharp odor.  Kind of what you'd have a few days after you stabbed somebody with a Poignard.  

Who knew that swordplay, bookkeeping and bad smells were all so closely related?