Word of the Day
hwearf
Hwearf
Old English
“An Old English word meaning 'a turning place' or 'a bank' — where ships could turn and come alongside — became the standard English word for the structure where vessels load and unload.”
Wharf derives from Old English hwearf (also hweorf), a word with a complex semantic range that included 'a turning, a change of direction' and 'a bank or shore.' The word is related to the Old English verb hwerfan ('to turn, to change, to go'), from Proto-Germanic *hwerbanan ('to turn, to revolve'). The connection between turning and a landing place may reflect the action of a vessel turning to come alongside the shore, or the turning of a river at a bend where the bank offered a natural landing. The word's Germanic cognates include Old Norse hvarf ('a turning, a disappearance') and Old High German hwarb ('a turning'). The plural 'wharves' preserves the irregular Old English pattern (like 'wives' from 'wife' and 'knives' from 'knife'), a linguistic fossil from a millennium ago embedded in modern commercial vocabulary.
5 stops · from England to Canary Wharf, London