The story
- Old French · derived fromcoisier“to wound, hurt, make uneasy”
- Old Norse · derived fromkveisa“boil”
- Middle English · inherited fromcoysy
- English todayqueasy
From Middle English coysy, possibly from Old Norse kveisa (“boil”) ( > Norwegian kveise/kvise), perhaps influenced by Anglo-Norman queisier, from Old French coisier (“to wound, hurt, make uneasy”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.