wirewire

Wire comes from Old English wīr ‘wire, metal thread, wire-ornament’, and goes back to Proto-Indo-European *weh₁y- ‘to turn, twist, weave, plait’.

1. Proto-Indo-Europeanc. 4500–2500 BCE*weh₁y-¹‘to turn’reconstructed
2. Proto-Indo-Europeanc. 4500–2500 BCE*weh₁iros¹‘a twist’reconstructed
3. Proto-Germanicc. 500 BCE–200 CE*wīraz¹reconstructed
4. Old Englishc. 450–1150wīr¹‘wire’
5. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500wir¹
6. Englishearliest quotation 1869wire¹

1. ¹ Wiktionary, English wire
2. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago: “Over the forehead is a large patch of pure…”.