n. (pl.)
Cl wykes
'corners (of the mouth)'
(Modern English wick, wike)Derived by early editors from OE wīc ‘bay, creek’, but now (following OED and Menner 1926: 400) accepted as a loan from ON, cp. e.g. OIcel vik ‘corner’, Icel vik ‘recess, inlet’, OSw vik (Sw veck) ‘angle, corner’, which provide a better analogue than OE wīc for both the form of the ME word (assuming a short /i/), and for its specific sense (cp. esp. OIcel munn-vik, Dan mundvig ‘the corners of the mouth’). ON vik has plausibly been explained as a derivative on the v. represented by OIcel víkja ‘to move, turn’ (cp. OE wīcan, OFris wīka, OHG wīhhan, etc.), in this case presumably formed on the stem of the pret. pl./pp. (vik-) with a sense development like ‘turn (inwards)’ to ‘(form an) angle, corner’; it is closely related to OE wīc, OIcel vík ‘small creek, inlet, bay’, which are associated with the present stem of the same v.
PGmc Ancestor
*wik-
Proposed ON Etymon (OIcel representative)
vik, 'corner'; cp. munn-vik (n. pl.) 'the corners of the mouth'
(ONP vik (sb.))
Other Scandinavian Reflexes
Far vik, Icel vik, Norw vik, Dan mundvig, OSw vik, MSw vik, Sw veck
OE Cognate
cp. wīc ‘bay, creek’
Phonological and morphological markers
Summary category
C1c
(C3)
Rare in ME (beyond the Gaw MS, most citations in MED are from 15c. medical texts), but attested after and in MnE dial in Sc., Ire. and N/EM as far south as Lin. and Not. (see OED, EDD and Thorson 87).
Occurrences in the Gersum Corpus
Gaw 1572; Cl 1690
Menner (1690n), followed by subsequent editors (see Anderson 1690n, GollCl 1690n, etc.) interprets the compound schyre-wykes at Cl 1690 as 'corners of the groin', i.e. 'middle of the body'.