274: awkward Sep 8, 2015

From the 'wkw' in 'awkward', someone looking at this word might think that it is Germanic, or even Scandinavian. This word ultimately comes from Old Norse 'afugr' which means ‘turned the wrong way’ and the suffix, '-ward'. 'Awkward' derives from late Middle English, meaning ‘the wrong way around', or 'upside down’: from the dialectic use of the word 'awk', which means ‘backward, perverse, clumsy’. Though the 'wkw' might not look natively English, it was not always spelt this way for any reasons having to do with its adoption.