Etymology

watch

W4A1T1C3H4

Today it means: A portable or wearable timepiece. Full definition →

Middle English wacche ← Old English wæċċe
Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

watch · noun1

  1. Old English · inherited fromwæċċe
  2. Middle English · inherited fromwacche
  3. English todaywatch

As a noun, from Middle English wacche, from Old English wæċċe. See below for verb form.

watch · verb2

  1. Proto-Germanic · inherited from*wakjaną
  2. Proto-West Germanic · inherited from*wakkjan
  3. Old English · inherited fromwæċċan
  4. Middle English · inherited fromwacchen
  5. English todaywatch

From Middle English wacchen, from Old English wæċċan, from Proto-West Germanic *wakkjan, from Proto-Germanic *wakjaną. Cognate with Dutch wekken, German wecken, Danish vække, Norwegian Bokmål vekke, Norwegian Nynorsk vekkja, Swedish väcka, Faroese and Icelandic vekja.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.