"She was a little irked," I said to a friend, and he gave me a blank look.
"I mean, she was annoyed, a little angry," I said. "That's what irked means...."
Well, it's a word everyone knows, but where does it come from? I was betting the Scottish.
But as usual, I was wrong. It comes from old Norse--the forerunner of modern Norwegian. Not a surprise, really--the Norwegians tend to get annoyed easily!
What about "Proto-Norse"? Yes, I googled it: turns out it actually LED to Old Norse at the beginning of the Viking Age! If that were the case, I wonder if the Proto Nordics would be "irked" if no credit were given! :-)
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