English words ending with -enk/-eng

Why aren’t words ending with -enk/-eng more common in Modern English?

Solution 1:

Mostly because -eng, -enk didn’t survive Middle English

We don’t have native words in -eng, -enk because of a regular sound-change that any such words underwent in their evolution from Old English to Middle English to Modern English.

For example, Old English had a verb lengen meaning to lengthen (transitively) or to linger (intransitively). In Middle English this became linge, ling before it died out in the late 1500s. The OED notes:

The normal modern form, if the Old English word had survived, would be linge.

Under clink, which was occasionally clenk in Middle English, they write that “the change of ‑eng, ‑enk, to ‑ing, ‑ink, being usual in Middle English”, from this larger entry:

Clink is probably simply a later phonetic form of clenk = clench < Old English clęnc(e)an, the change of ‑eng, ‑enk, to ‑ing, ‑ink, being usual in Middle English; compare think from Old English þencan, also stink, stench, blink, blench, bink, bench, earlier benk; also Inglish = English. But klink might be the Danish or Low German word, and clinch a result of its action upon clench.

Similar transitions can be seen in words like

• Old English crengan becoming Modern English cringe.
• Middle English frenge became Modern English fringe because per the OED:
  

  The change of Middle English /ɛ/ to modern English /ɪ/ before /ndʒ/ is normal: compare hinge, singe.

• Old English sængan or sæncgan, sengan or sencgan became Middle English synge, sindge and thence to Modern English singe.
• Middle English heng (probably from Old English hęncg deriving from the verb that became hang) became hinge today except for in Stonehenge.

But also from neutralization before ‑ng, ‑nk

Today under æ tensing, any words with -ang, -ank in them like cancre, dank, blank, fang, bang, bank, rank, rang, sank, sang, slang, sprang, spank, tank, thank, yank, language all tend to have their original /æ/ phoneme raised to [ɛ] or even [e] phonetically for most native speakers — pace Stephen Fry, who really does actually have [æŋ] in the word whenever he says language.

But many of us do not. That’s because for us this raising and tensing effect also neutralizes any possible tense–lax distinction in words like rank compared to lax/open-ɛ in wren versus tense/close-e in rain. So it doesn’t matter whether we spell it reng or rang, renk or rank these days because we wouldn’t be able to hear a difference there either way.

It’s possible for native speakers to produce lax [ɛ] in loanwords like ginseng if we try hard enough. But we really don’t like that vowel showing up there, so normally it instead becomes either “ginsing” like sing with neutralized [ɪ]/[i] or “ginsang” like sang with neutralized [æ]/[e] in our minds — and, often as not, in our speech as well unless we should try very, very, very hard.