The Old English verb:wikt:wiccian|wiccian has a cognate in Middle Low German:wikt:wicken|wicken. The further etymology of this word is problematic. It has no clear cognates in Germanic outside of English and Low German, and there are numerous possibilities for the Indo-European root from which it may have been derived.
The OED states that the noun is "apparently" :wikt:deverbal|deverbal, but for the verb merely states that it is "of obscure origin".
Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch connects the "Ingvaeonic word" *wikkōn with Gothic :wikt:weihs|weihs "sacred" *weik- "to separate, to divide", probably via early Germanic practices of cleromancy such as those reported by Tacitus,
Grimm also considers *weik- "to curve, bend" and *weg'h- "to move".
R. Lühr connects wigol "prophetic, mantic", wīglian "to practice divination" and suggests Proto-Germanic *wigōn, geminated to *wikkōn. The basic form would then be the feminine, wicce < *wikkæ < *wikkōn with palatalization due to the preceding i and the following *æ < *ōn in early Ingvaeonic. The palatal -cc- in wicca would then be analogous to the feminine.
*An alternative possibility is to derive the palatal directly from the verb wiccian < *wikkija. Lühr conversely favours derivation of this verb from the noun.
The Middle English word wicche did not differentiate between feminine and masculine, however the masculine meaning became less common in Standard English, being replaced by words like ":wikt:wizard|wizard" and ":wikt:warlock|warlock". The modern spelling witch with the medial 't' first appears in the 16th century. In current colloquial English "witch" is almost exclusively applied to women, and the OED has "now only dialectal" for the masculine noun. Figurative use to refer to a bewitching young girl begins in the 18th century, while wiche as a contemptuous term for an old woman is attested since the 15th century. "A witch of Endor" as a fanciful term for a medium appears in 19th-century literature. The meaning "an adherent of Wicca" is due to Gerald Gardner's purported "Witch Cult", and now appears as a separate meaning of the word also in mainstream dictionaries. For example, Meriam-Webster currently distinguishes four meanings of the noun witch, Other suggestions for the underlying root are untenable or widely rejected:
Grimm reject a connection with *wek- "speak", suggested by P. Lessiak.
Walter William Skeat derived the word from PIE *weid-, Old Englishwita "wise man, wizard" and witan "to know", considering it a corruption of an earlier *witga. No Old English spelling with -t- is known, and this etymology is not accepted today.
Robert Graves in his 1948 The White Goddess, in discussing the willow which was sacred to the Greek goddessHecate, connects the word to a root *wei- which connotes bending or pliance, by saying: "Its connection with witches is so strong in Northern Europe, that the words 'witch' and 'wicked' are derived from the same ancient word for willow, which also yields 'wicker'." This confounds English and Scandinavian evidence, since the weak root in English has no connection with willows, and Old Norse has no word for "witch" cognate to the English.
Old English
Old English also had :wikt:hægtesse|hægtesse "witch, fury", whence Modern English hag, of uncertain origin, but cognate to German :wikt:Hexe|Hexe, from an Old High German:wikt:haga-zussa|haga-zussa, Common Germanic *haga-tusjon-, perhaps from a *tesvian "to mar, damage", meaning "field-damager". The element hag- originally means "fence, wooden enclosure", and hence also "enclosed fields, cultivated land". Other Old English synonyms of wicca and wicce include gealdricge, scinlæce, hellrúne. The Old English plural form for both the masculine and feminine nouns was wiccan and wiccecræft was "witchcraft". The earliest recorded use of the word is in the Laws of Ælfred, which date to about 890: In the homilies of the Old English grammarian Ælfric, dating to the late 10th century we find: In both these examples wiccan is the plural noun, not an adjective. The adjective fulan can mean "physically unclean" as well as "morally or spiritually unclean" or "wicked". In Old English glossaries the words wicce and wicca are used to gloss such Latin terms as :wikt:augur|augur, :wikt:hariolus|hariolus, :wikt:conjector|conjector, and :wikt:pythonissa|pythonyssa, all of which mean "diviner", "soothsayer", which suggests a possible role of fortune-teller for the witch in Anglo-Saxon times. The word wicca is associated with animistic healing rites in Halitgar's Latin Penitential where it is stated that The phrase swa wiccan tæcaþ seems to be an addition to Halitgar's original, added by an 11th-century Old English translator.
