The word “awkward “came to us from the Vikings (and what it means may surprise you).
You know that feeling when something rather embarrassing — or just plain weird — happens, and then everybody in the room just sits there in silence, not knowing what to say? That’s awkward.
The word “awkward” is built of two parts: awk- and -ward. Awk comes from Old Norse afugr which means "turned the wrong way”, which comes from the Proto-Indo-European root apu-ko; which it shares with words like apology and apotheosis.
The -ward suffix comes from the Old English -weard, which means "turned toward”.
So, if something facing “northwards” points towards the North, then something “awkward” is facing towards being turned the wrong way? Now that’s a twist!
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