Language Of Confusion: Vacation, Part II

More on words that are related to vacate, all descended from the Proto Indo European eue-, to leave, abandon, or give out. And somehow that gave us vacation.
 
First today, vanish, which you can at least see as being related to vacate. It showed up in the fourteenth century as a short version of the word esvaniss-, which is from the Old French esvanir, same meaning as vanish. It’s from the Vulgar Latin exvanire, from the classical Latin evanescere, to disappear. The e- comes from ex- and means out and the vanescere means to vanish, from vanus, which means empty or, well, vain. Anyway, that word is from the Proto Indo European wano-, another form of eue-. To vanish is to vanish out. But we lost the e- in front.
 
So yeah, vain. It also showed up in the fourteenth century from the Old French vain/vein, which is just from vanus. Then there’s vanity, an older word having shown up in the thirteenth century. It’s from the Old French vanite, from the classical Latin vanitatem, vanity or emptiness, and again, that’s from vanus. Because vain people are metaphorically empty, we have those words.
 
How about some words beginning with W? Wane comes from the Old English wanian, to diminish. It’s from the Proto Germanic wanonan, which is from wano, the same as vanish. Basically, this word is the same as vanish except it came to us through Germanic origins instead of Latin.
 
Also related is want of all words. It showed up in the thirteenth century from the Old Norse vanta, from the Proto Germanic wanen. That’s from the PIE weno-, which is from eue-, so a slightly different version of the word. Why is want from a word meaning to leave/abandon? Because when you want something, you’re lacking it—you’re empty of it, if you get my meaning.
 

Now if you go in another direction for meaning: wanton. It showed up in the early fourteenth century as wan-towen. The wan- was a Middle English word element meaning wanting or lacking, and kind of used the same as un-, and it happens also to be from wano-. The second half of the word is actually from the Proto Germanic teuhan, the origin for tug of all things, so wanton means “un-tugged along”, which… somehow gives us wanton.

 
Sources
Online Etymology Dictionary
Google Translate
Omniglot
University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center
University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language

University of Texas at Arlington
Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English
Encyclopaedia Britannica