this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2025
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I thought "wasp" came from the Norman word "wespe" (French word guespe then later guêpe), but is that not true? Or do we just not know and these are possible explanations but there is no consensus?
So, disclaimer here that I'm not a linguist, I just enjoy learning about linguistics.
OED doesn't have a Norman ancestor for English wasp - it goes back through Old English (wæfs, wæps, wæsp) to Saxon and Middle German/Dutch all the way back to pre-Germanic.
My guess here was that there's a common Proto-Indo-European ancestor and Wiktionary, FWIW, agrees - they provide a reconstructed P.I.E word: *wóbʰseh₂ (“wasp”)
ETA: here's the link to the OED online's etymology page and a screenshot of it if you don't have access through your library.
Thanks a lot for the answer! Quite interesting that the Proto-Indo-European word could have been something close to wasp, only for English to go through the waps->wasp that you explained in your previous post.
Well, one fewer false "fact" to believe in, many more to go!