Language Matters | World Water Day: where does the word ‘water’ come from and how did it give us ‘vodka’?

Its pure liquid form is defined by absence – transparent, odourless, tasteless, near-colourless – yet it is the main constituent of the Earth’s hydrosphere and living organisms’ fluids. Water, water, everywhere.

Etymologically, “water”, from the Old English wæter, came from the Proto-Germanic *watōr, ultimately descending from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) *wód-r, a suffixed form of the PIE root *wed- “water, wet”.

The PIE suffixed form *wód-r became *údōr “water” in the Hellenic language family, to become the Ancient Greek húdōr, and thence the Greek ydr(o) forms. Some hydro- compounds in Greek were adopted in Latin, from whence they passed into English directly or via French, the earliest in the 13th and 14th centuries, and several others, including hydrographer and hydrophobia, in the 16th and 17th centuries. The greatest number of such words entered English as a consequence of the late-18th and 19th century acquisition of scientific vocabulary.

The PIE root *wed- had other suffixed forms, including *udros “water creature”, which evolved into various cognate words across the Indo-European languages meaning “otter”, except the Greek húdros/húdra “water serpent” – Hydra in Greek mythology.

Also from the PIE *wód-r evolved *udōr for the Italic languages, giving the Latin unda “wave”, and related forms such as undāre “to flow in waves”. Several English words owe their origins to this, including undulate, inundate, redundant, abundant, abound and surround.

For the latter two, for example, the addition of prefixes ab- and super-, respectively, gave Classical Latin abundāre “to overflow, be rich in, have an excess”, and Late Latin superundāre “to overflow (figuratively)”, both entering Middle English via Anglo-Norman.