Language Pulsations: Awkward
December 14th, 2008 | By C. Puls in Language Pulsations | 3 Comments »
“That’s so awk!” “Awkward turtle!” “Stalkward!” “Wow, awkies…” “Awksome!” It seems like teenagers these days cannot get enough of the word awkward. However, the word happens to have a rather awkward etymology.
It comes from awk, a Middle English word meaning “back-handed, wrong way around, perverse,” added to the adverbial suffix -weard. As it turns out, “awkeward” was a directional term that meant “in the awk (i.e., wrong) direction”—this is why “awkward” is similar in spelling to the likes of “toward,” “forward,” and “backward.” Imagine—in old forms of English, it was acceptable “to go awkward” just like you we can “go forward” today!
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