The story
- Old English · inherited from*wisp
- Middle English · inherited fromwispe
- English todaywisp
From Middle English wispe, wyspe, wips, wipse, perhaps from an unrecorded Old English *wisp, *wips. Cognate with West Frisian wisp, Dutch wisp (“bundle of hay or straw”), Norwegian bokmål/Swedish/Bornholm Danish visp (“handful or bundle of grass, hay, etc.”). Akin also to Middle Dutch/Middle Low German wispel (“measure of grain”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.