Adweard

Part of speech: adjective, adverb

Definitions

1. Archaic term meaning turned away from something, facing or moving in the opposite direction from it
2. An old English adjective describing something that has been turned aside or directed away from a point
3. Obsolete word for being turned off course, pointed away, or positioned facing in the other direction

Etymology: Adweard is an Old English word meaning "turned away" or "averted," built from "ad-" (a prefix meaning "away" or "from") and "weard" ("toward" or "facing"), the adverb-form ancestor of modern "ward" in phrases like "homeward." The compound describes something literally facing or turned away from the viewer, and it survives in the Middle English adjective "awkward" through a later sense shift. Unlike many English words that passed through French, this one stayed within the Germanic line. Its earlier sense of being turned the wrong way gradually came to mean inconvenient or clumsy, so that a "awkward" person was once someone who was physically out of step with the situation, not just socially uneasy.