Wrist

How to spell wrist

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce wrist

What does wrist mean?

1. nounThe joint connecting the hand to the forearm, allowing the hand to bend and rotate.

Wrist in a sentence

• She broke her wrist playing tennis.

• The watch felt heavy on her wrist.

Where does wrist come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word comes straight from Old English wrist, the joint connecting the hand to the forearm, and it has barely changed in form for more than a thousand years. It belongs to a family of Germanic words built on a root meaning 'to twist or turn', the same idea found in 'writhe' and 'wrest', because the wrist is precisely the joint that lets the hand rotate. Its closest cousins survive in other Germanic languages, such as German and Dutch forms tied to twisting and turning. Centuries ago English routinely pronounced the w- in the wr- cluster, so words like wrist, write, wrong and wreck all began with an audible /w/. Speakers gradually stopped sounding that w-, but the spelling froze in place, which is why wrist now carries a silent letter at the front and why it trips writers who spell by ear.

How the word is built

• wrist (single Old English root; the silent initial w- survives from the old wr- cluster)