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wick

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Pronunciation

wick1 of a candle

Etymology

The candle wick is inherited from Middle English weke, also wueke and later wicke,[2][3][1] inherited from Old English wēoce, also wēoc in candelwēoc,[4][5][6][7] inherited from Proto-West Germanic *weukā (“flax bundle; wick”).[1] It is cognate with Middle Dutch wiecke, now Dutch wiek, Middle Low German wēke and Old High German wiohha, now dialectal German Wieche.[4][5][2][3] The OED and Etymonline know no certain cognates outside Germanic,[4][3] and Hoad and the Shorter Oxford call it of unknown origin.[5][6] A connection has been suggested with Proto-Indo-European *weg- (“to weave”), seen in Old Irish figim (“I weave”) and Latin vēlum (“sail, veil”);[4][8][9] Barnhart derives the word from a reduplicated Proto-Germanic noun and relates it to wōcig (“noose”).[2] The short vowel of wick became general in the 17th century, replacing the long vowel of Middle English,[2][3] and the OED compares sick for the sound change.[4] Barnhart traces the form wicke (before 1376) perhaps to an unrecorded Old English *wice,[10] for which the OED finds no evidence.[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The wick of a lamp or candle: Old English, where the word glosses the Latin words for a lamp wick, and weócan settan meant to put a wick to a lamp.[7][4] Barnhart dates the Old English word to about 1000.[2]

Semantic evolution

Wicks were made of rushes, tow or flax before cotton, and were once used in torches as well as lamps and candles.[4] Johnson (1755) defined the word as the substance round which the wax or tallow of a torch or candle is laid.[11] From 1391 it also named the material collectively, wicking;[4] from 1658 it was also a strip of material used in surgery as a tent or dressing.[4] The 20th century added colloquial phrases: to turn the wick up or down, to accelerate or slow an engine (1948);[4] to get on someone's wick, to irritate them, from 1945 in the OED[4] and 1937 in Green's Dictionary of Slang;[12] and to dip one's wick, of a man, to have sex, from 1958 in the OED and Etymonline.[4][3] Ayto and Green take the wick of these phrases to be short for Hampton Wick, rhyming slang for prick, and so a different word from the candle wick,[8][12][3] though Green records wick for the penis as early as 1834.[12] The verb, of a fabric drawing off moisture as a wick does, is dated 1949 by Merriam-Webster[13] and 1952 by the OED.[4]

Timeline

  • c. 1000 – Old English wēoce, the wick of a lamp or candle.[2][4]
  • before 1200 – Middle English wueke.[2]
  • 1391 – as a material, wicking.[4]
  • 1658 – a strip of material used as a surgical dressing.[4]
  • 1834 – the penis, implied in dip one's wick.[12] The OED's first record of the phrase is from 1958.[4]
  • 1937 – get on someone's wick, to annoy someone.[12] The OED dates it to 1945.[4][8]
  • 1948 – turn the wick up, to accelerate.[4]
  • 1949 – verb, to draw off a liquid like a wick.[13] The OED dates the verb to 1952.[4]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A cord or strip of loosely twisted or woven fibres in a candle, lamp or lighter, which draws up the fuel to the flame by capillary action.[14][13][4]
  2. A strip of gauze or similar material placed in a wound to drain it.[13][4]
  3. get on someone's wick (British, informal): to irritate someone: His constant whistling gets on my wick.[14][4]
  4. dip one's wick (slang): of a man, to have sex.[4][12]

Verb

  1. To draw off or carry a liquid by capillary action: The new running shirt wicks sweat away from the skin.[13][4][6]
  2. Of a liquid, to move through a material by capillary action.[4][6]

Word family

  • candlewick
  • lampwick
  • wicking
  • wickless

wick2 dwelling, village, farm

Etymology

The word for a dwelling, village or farm is inherited from Middle English wik,[13][9] inherited from Old English wīc (“dwelling place, abode”).[4][5][3][7] The word, like Old Frisian wīk, Old Saxon wīc and Old High German wīch, is probably an early Germanic borrowing from Latin vīcus (“row of houses, quarter of a town, street, village”),[4][5][6][13][3][15] the root idea being a collection of dwellings.[15] The same word survives in Dutch wijk (“quarter, district”) and in German Weichbild (“municipal area”).[4][5][3] The Latin noun is cognate with Ancient Greek οἶκος (oîkos, “house”),[4][5][6] and Etymonline traces it to Proto-Indo-European *weik- (“clan”).[3] The OED also counts Gothic 𐍅𐌴𐌹𐌷𐍃 (weihs, “village”) among the cognates of the Latin word,[4] while Weekley takes the Gothic form too as a loan from Latin.[16]

Earliest recorded meaning

A dwelling or abode: Old English, in the translation of Bede's Ecclesiastical History; the general sense was obsolete by about 1300.[4][7]

Semantic evolution

Already in Old English the word also meant a town, village or hamlet, and a farm.[4][5][7] The "village" sense is now obsolete or dialectal, but it survives in English place names in -wich and -wick;[4][15][8] Ayto notes that the wick of Hampton Wick, in south-west London, is this word.[8] The sense "dairy farm" was common in the 13th and 14th centuries, as in Gatwick, "goat farm",[3] and the OED finds it in Domesday Book.[4] From 1301 to 1811 wick was also a local word for an enclosed piece of ground.[4] In Wright's day the word was obsolete in the north and in East Anglia except in place names,[17] and Etymonline thinks it survives, if at all, only as a local word in East Anglia or Essex.[3] Old English also had the verb wīcian, to dwell or encamp, which lasted until about 1300.[4]

Timeline

  • Old English – a dwelling or abode (obsolete by about 1300).[4]
  • Old English – a town, village or hamlet.[4]
  • 11th century – a farm, especially a dairy farm, recorded in Domesday Book.[4][5]
  • 1301 – an enclosed piece of ground, a close (local, until 1811).[4]

Meanings

Noun

  1. (dialect) A farm, especially a dairy farm.[13][4]
  2. (obsolete or dialect) A town, village or hamlet; now chiefly as the ending of place names.[4][17]
  3. (obsolete, Old English–1300) A dwelling or abode.[4][6]

Usage notes

Several other rare words are spelled wick: a creek or small bay in Scotland and the north of England, from Old Norse vík, recorded from 1664;[4][6][13][17] the corner of the mouth or eye, a dialect word also of Norse origin;[6][13] a curling term of unknown origin;[4][13] and a northern dialect form of quick.[4][6]

References

  1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  7. ^ a b c d e Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
  8. ^ a b c d e Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
  9. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  10. ^ Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
  11. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  12. ^ a b c d e f Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
  13. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  14. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  15. ^ a b c Smith, A. H. (1956), English Place-Name Elements, 2 vols. (English Place-Name Society 25–26), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
  16. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  17. ^ a b c Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)