anger

Where it comes from

From Middle English anger (“grief, pain, trouble, affliction, vexation, sorrow, wrath”), from Old Norse angr, ǫngr (“affliction, sorrow”) (compare Old Norse ang, ǫng (“troubled”)), from Proto-Germanic *angazaz (“grief, sorrow”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂enǵʰ- (“narrow, tied together”).

Cognate with Danish anger (“regret, remorse”), Norwegian Bokmål anger (“regret, remorse”), Swedish ånger (“regret”), Icelandic angur (“trouble”), Old English ange, enge (“narrow, close, straitened, constrained, confined, vexed, troubled, sorrowful, anxious, oppressive, severe, painful, cruel”), German Angst (“anxiety, anguish, fear”), Latin angō (“squeeze, choke, vex”), angor (“strangulation; anguish, torment”) (whence the English doublet angor), French angoisse, Albanian ang (“fear, anxiety, pain, nightmare”), Avestan 𐬄𐬰𐬀𐬵 (ązah, “strangulation; distress”), Ancient Greek ἄγχω (ánkhō, “to squeeze, strangle”), Sanskrit अंहस् (aṃhas), अंहु (aṃhu, “anxiety, distress, affliction”, literally “narrowness”). Also compare with English anguish, anxious, quinsy, and perhaps to awe and ugly. The word seems to have originally meant “to choke, squeeze”.

The verb is from Middle English angren, angeren, from Old Norse angra. Compare with Icelandic angra, Norwegian Nynorsk angra, Norwegian Bokmål angre, Swedish ångra, Danish angre.