- angle (v.1)
- "to fish with a hook," mid-15c., from Old English angel (n.) "angle, hook, fishhook," related to anga "hook," from PIE *ang-/*ank- "to bend" (see angle (n.)). Compare Old English angul, Old Norse öngull, Old High German angul, German Angel "fishhook." Figurative sense is recorded from 1580s.
It is but a sory lyfe and an yuell to stand anglynge all day to catche a fewe fisshes. [John Palsgrave, 1530]
Related: Angled; angling.
- angle (n.)
- "space between intersecting lines," late 14c., from Old French angle "angle, corner," and directly from Latin angulus "an angle, corner," a diminutive form from PIE root *ang-/*ank- "to bend" (source also of Greek ankylos "bent, crooked," Latin ang(u)ere "to compress in a bend, fold, strangle;" Old Church Slavonic aglu "corner;" Lithuanian anka "loop;" Sanskrit ankah "hook, bent," angam "limb;" Old English ancleo "ankle;" Old High German ango "hook"). Angle bracket is 1875 in carpentry; 1956 in typography.
- Angle
- member of a Teutonic tribe, Old English, from Latin Angli "the Angles," literally "people of Angul" (Old Norse Öngull), a region in what is now Holstein, said to be so-called for its hook-like shape (see angle (n.)). People from the tribe there founded the kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbia, and East Anglia in 5c. Britain. Their name, rather than that of the Saxons or Jutes, may have become the common one for the whole group of Germanic tribes because their dialect was the first committed to writing.
- angle (v.2)
- "to move at an angle, to move diagonally or obliquely," 1741, from angle (n.). Related: Angled; angling.
