Etymology

spanwanned

S1P3A1N1W4A1N1N1E1D2

Today it means: stuck astride a wall whilst attempting to climb over it. Full definition →

Old English spannan ← Proto-Germanic *spannaną
Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

  1. Proto-Germanic · derived from*spannaną
  2. Old English · derived fromspannan“to span”
  3. English todayspanwanned

Possibly from Old English spannan (“to span”) + winnan (“to struggle, to suffer”); from Proto-Germanic *spannaną, *winnaną.

Words from the same roots

Old Englishspannan all →

span

Proto-Germanic*spannaną all →

span

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.