Etymology

wrist

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Today it means: The complex joint between forearm bones, carpus, and metacarpals where the hand is attached to the arm; the carpus in a narrow sense. Full definition →

Middle English wrist ← Old English wrist ← Proto-West Germanic *wristu
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The story

  1. Proto-Germanic · derived from*wrīþaną“to twist, turn”
  2. Proto-Germanic · inherited from*wristuz
  3. Proto-West Germanic · inherited from*wristu
  4. Old English · inherited fromwrist
  5. Middle English · inherited fromwrist
  6. English todaywrist

From Middle English wrist, from Old English wrist, from Proto-West Germanic *wristu, from Proto-Germanic *wristuz (compare Old Frisian wrist, Low German Wrist, German Rist (“back of hand, instep, withers”), Swedish vrist), from Proto-Germanic *wrīþaną (“to twist, turn”). More at writhe.

Words from the same roots

Proto-Germanic*wrīþaną all →

writhewreathe

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.