The story
- Proto-West Germanic · inherited from*werawulf
- Old English · inherited fromwerewulf
- Middle English · inherited fromwerwolf
- English todaywerewolf
From Middle English werwolf, from Old English werewulf, from Proto-West Germanic *werawulf, from Proto-West Germanic *wer (“man”) + *wulf (“wolf”). Cognate with Dutch weerwolf, Low German Warwulf, German Werwolf, Danish varulv, Swedish varulv, and even possibly Finnish vironsusi. By surface analysis, were- + wolf. * Compare French garou in loup-garou; French dialectal gairou, varou (“werewolf”); Medieval Latin gerulphus, garulphus (“werewolf”); all from Germanic, probably Frankish *werawulf.
Words from the same roots
Old Englishwerewulf all →
were-
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.