Etymology

hards

H4A1R1D2S1

Today it means: The short coarser fibers of flax or hemp; tow. Full definition →

Middle English herdes ← Old English heordan ← Proto-West Germanic *heʀdā
Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

  1. Proto-Indo-European · derived from*kes-“to comb, card”
  2. Proto-Germanic · inherited from*hezdǭ
  3. Proto-West Germanic · inherited from*heʀdā
  4. Old English · inherited fromheordan“hards of flax, tow”
  5. Middle English · inherited fromherdes
  6. English todayhards

From Middle English herdes, hurdes, plural of herde (“piece of hards”), from Old English heordan (“hards of flax, tow”), weak feminine plural of heorde (“headhair”), from Proto-West Germanic *heʀdā, from Proto-Germanic *hezdǭ, from Proto-Indo-European *kes- (“to comb, card”).

Words from the same roots

Proto-Indo-European*kes- all →

hairciron

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.