Awkward is an adjective with a long history. It comes from the word parts awk and ward. Awk is a prefix that comes from the Old Norse word afugr which means “turned the wrong way”. Then, the actual word Awk was utilized, coming from Middle English and it meant “backward”. The suffix of the word is ward, meaning indicating direction towards (ironically toward is in all the meanings I found and that contains the suffix). The suffix was also used in the word backward, and that was the previous meaning of awk.
The first uses of the word are in the middle 14th century (1300s). Evidence of this is “Oxford says “awkward” meant “in the wrong direction, in the wrong way,” when it appeared for the first time in the Middle English poem Pricke of Conscience
The first uses of the word are in the middle 14th century (1300s). Evidence of this is “Oxford says “awkward” meant “in the wrong direction, in the wrong way,” when it appeared for the first time in the Middle English poem Pricke of Conscience