The Etymology of Torque
Torque has had two coronations in English. The first came in 1834, when archaeologists writing about the elaborate twisted-metal neck-rings worn by Celtic and Gallic warriors borrowed the Latin word torquēs (a neck-collar, literally a twisted thing). Roman authors had described these ornaments in detail; the British Museum and continental antiquarians revived the word for them. The second coronation came in 1882, when the Scottish-Irish physicist James Thomson — brother of Lord Kelvin — proposed torque as a name for the rotational analogue of force in mechanics. He chose the word precisely because the Latin verb torquēre meant to twist, and a torque is what twists a shaft. Both senses ultimately come from Proto-Indo-European *terkʷ- (to twist), one of the most productive roots in the language family. Its descendants include torch (a twist of pitch-soaked wood), torment (twisting pain), torture, contortion, distort, and the surname Thwaite (a clearing in a twisted wood).