The story
- Old English · inherited fromnolde
- Middle English · inherited fromnolde“would not”
- English todaynould
From Middle English nolde (“would not”), from Old English nolde, first and third person preterite of nyllan (“will not”), from ne- (“not”) + wyllan (“will”). More at ne, will.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.