USAGE: "vixen" [was Re: COMMENT PLEASE]

Quoting John Cowan <jcowan@...>:

> Now you want weird, consider "vixen".  The /v/ (contrasted with the
> /f/ of "fox") probably comes from a dialect that voiced initial
> fricatives ("'What were you doing?'  'Zailin' the bloody boat.'"
> --Dorothy L. Sayers).  But on investigation it turns out that *every*
> dialect has /v/ in "vixen"!  How the devil did it become so uniform?
Also something I don't understand:  why would it be "vixen" (with a
high vowel) rather than "vexen" (with a mid vowel, taking umlaut
and subsequent unrounding into account)? Did something like a Proto-
Germanic *fuks-, analogous with NHG <Fuchs>, remain in the feminine
but not in the masculine?

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Thomas Wier            "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637