n.
'waist'
(Modern English waist)The nearest formal analogues to ME wast (PDE waist) are a group of Gmc nouns formed on the pres. stem of the PGmc v. *waxsan- ‘to grow’ (cp. OE weaxan, etc.) with a -t suffix: masc. u-stems in Go and ON (cp. Go wahstus ‘growth, statute’ and OIcel vǫxtr ‘size, stature; growth (etc.)'); and fem. i-stems in Go uswahsts ‘growth’ and OHG, OS (gi)wahst ‘growth’. There is no direct cognate to these formations attested in OE, which has the very closely related wæstm (masc. or neut.) ‘growth; fruit; product; abundance (etc.)’ (cp. OS wastum), formed from *waxs-t- with an additional -m. The existence of this word, which shows the same change /xst/ > /st/ which we must assume in ME wast, together with the widespread Gmc cognates persuade most authorities that ME wast represents an OE *wæst, *weaxt. Knigge (79) derives ME wast solely from ON vǫxstr and there is a single occurrence of a n. at a1225 Lamb.Hom.Creed (Lamb 487) 77 (see MED s.v.) with a spelling implying medial /ks/. The sense ‘waist’ is not known for any of the Gmc cognates, but a development from ‘size (of the body)’, i.e. ‘(measurement of) girth’ is wholly plausible.
PGmc Ancestor
*waxs-
Proposed ON Etymon (OIcel representative)
vǫxtr ‘size, stature; growth (etc.)'
(ONP vǫxtr (sb.))
Other Scandinavian Reflexes
Far vøkstur, Icel vöxtur, Norw vokster, ODan wext, Dan vækst, vekst, OSw væxter, Sw växt
OE Cognate
cp. wæstm ‘growth; fruit; product; abundance (etc.)’
Phonological and morphological markers
Summary category
CCC1a
A handful of citations from the late 14c. onwards, with no obvious dialectal marking.
Occurrences in the Gersum Corpus
Gaw 144