The Etymology of Wasser
Wasser is German for water and a textbook case of Indo-European conservation. Modern Wasser descends from Old High German wazzar, recorded from the 8th century, and traces cleanly back through Proto-Germanic *watōr to Proto-Indo-European *wódr̥, one of the oldest reconstructible nouns in the family. The cognates form a small map of the Indo-European world: English water, Dutch water, Frisian wetter, Old Norse vatn (Swedish vatten, Danish vand), Gothic watō, Hittite wātar, Greek hýdōr (the source of every hydro- word in scientific English), Sanskrit udán-, Old Church Slavonic voda, and Latin unda (wave) and udus (wet). The Latin word for water itself, aqua, is from a different root, which is why Romance languages diverge here. Wasser also lives in countless German compounds — Wasserstoff (hydrogen, literally water-stuff), Wasserfall (waterfall), Trinkwasser (drinking water) — so any English speaker who recognises water already half-knows the German vocabulary of streams and pipes.