ankle

Note: Middle English ancle is often presumed to have been borrowed from a Scandinavian predecessor (with a preserved nasal consonant) of the Norse etymon attested as ǫkkla in Old Icelandic. Complicating the already complex mixture of forms given above are Middle English anclee, anclowe and their modern dialect descendants such as ancliff, ankley, which go back to Old English anclēow, anclēowe "ankle," cognate with Old Frisian onklef, anklef, Middle Dutch anclau, anclief, Old High German anchlao; these appear to show conflation with the outcomes of Germanic *klawō- "claw" (as Old English clawu, clēa "claw, hoof"; see claw entry 1). Germanic *ankula- is usually further identified with Indo-European *h₂eng-(e)lo- (see angle entry 1), though the etymon could equally well be derived within Germanic from the base *ank- seen in Old High German ancha. The latter has been connected with Sanskrit áṅgam "limb, member" and aṅgúliḥ, aṅgúriḥ "finger, toe," which appears to have suffixation similar to Germanic *ankula-.