Muzzle, Puzzle, Guzzle & Nuzzle

These words come under the questionable heading of frequentatives. One of them is a frequentative - a term, usually a verb, derived from another and indicating frequent repetition thereof -, one of them might be, and two of them are very probably not.

Since it's usually a final -le that indicates a frequentative, there will be a number of false frequentatives and perhaps just as many crypto-frequentatives. So far, I do not know. The first word I used to test the water some months ago took me an hour or so to achieve little but words, confusion, no conclusion and an unfinished draft.

And so I start again.

'Nuzzle' is said to date back to about 1400 and be a back-formation (process by which a new word is formed from an older word by interpreting the former as a derivative of the latter) of noselyng, i.e. nose-lying, or prostrate. Within a 100 years, it had become (recorded as) to 'burrow with the nose, thrust the nose into'. I find the back-formation explanation as unlikely as needing the term noselyng in the first place and suspect the far commoner human and animal habit of nuzzling, as per today's meaning, to be the probable culprit, and hence it probably derives from Anglo-Norman nase, nees, neiz, nez, noise, etc.

This is my first post on the topic, and may well prove completely wrong, but I'm throwing it out there anyway.

I'd be interested to hear other points of view.