Language Of Confusion: Wait, Part I

What am I, a waiter?

Anyway, wait showed up in the thirteenth century meaning to watch for with hostile intent—like lay in wait. It wasn’t until the late fourteenth century that it meant to stay in a place, see to it that something occurs, or to attend to, and from that last meaning, it start to mean to wait tables in the mid sixteenth century. It comes from the Anglo French/Old North French watier, to watch, from the Frankish wahton, Proto Germanic what-, and all the way back to the Proto Indo European weg-, to be strong or lively. Which I guess you need to be if you’re laying in wait for someone.
 
A lot of other words related to watchfulness come from weg-. You know, like watch. That actually comes from the Old English waecce, watch, and waeccan, to keep watch, and that’s from the Proto Germanic wakjan, which is also from weg-. Who would have thought, watch and wait?
 
Also unsurprisingly related is wake—but only the waking up one, the one related to boats is not from the same origin. Wake is actually from the Old English words wacan, to awake, and wacian, to be awake (I guess those things used to be separate), and like watch is from wakjan, wake is from the Proto Germanic wakjanan. Weird that they took on such different sounds.
 
Let’s see what Latin has done to the word. Vigil is also related, having shown up in the thirteenth century meaning the eve of a religious festival—or keeping watch on a festival eve—not coming to mean keeping awake on purpose until 1711. It’s from the Anglo French/Old French vigile, from the classical Latin vigilia (watch), and finally weg-. There’s also vigor, which showed up in the fourteenth century from the Anglo French vigour and Old French vigor, which are from the Latin vigorem, strength. So Latin makes it so we turned the W into a V. Sure.
 
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
Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English
Old English-English Dictionary
Fordham University