Etymology

honey

hon·ey
H4O1N1E1Y4

Today it means: A sweet, viscous, gold-colored fluid produced from plant nectar by bees, and often consumed by humans. Full definition →

Middle English hony, honi ← Old English huniġ ← Proto-West Germanic *hunag
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The story

  1. Proto-Indo-European · inherited from*kn̥h₂onk-o-s
  2. Proto-Germanic · inherited from*hunagą
  3. Proto-West Germanic · inherited from*hunag
  4. Old English · inherited fromhuniġ
  5. Middle English · inherited fromhony, honi
  6. English todayhoney

From Middle English hony, honi, from Old English huniġ, from Proto-West Germanic *hunag, from Proto-Germanic *hunagą (compare Saterland Frisian Hunich, West Frisian hunich, German Low German Honnig, German Honig), from earlier *hunangą (compare North Frisian honning, hönning, West Frisian huning, Dutch honing, Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, and Norwegian Nynorsk honning, Swedish honung, Faroese hunangur, Icelandic hunang), from Proto-Indo-European *kn̥h₂onk-o-s, from *kn̥h₂ónks. Cognate with Middle Welsh canecon (“gold”), Latin canicae pl (“bran”), Tocharian B kronkśe (“bee”), Albanian qengjë (“beehive”), Ancient Greek κνῆκος (knêkos, “safflower”), Northern Kurdish şan (“beehive”), Northern Luri گونج (gonj, “bee”), Finnish hunaja.

Words from the same roots

Old Englishhuniġ all →

HoneywellHunwickHoneybourneHoneydon

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.