Wurdahuzdą: Proto-Germanic dictionary

verb Strong class 1 to scratch, carve to engrave, inscribe, write Of unclear origin. Kroonen derives the root from a Proto-Indo-European *wreyd-, with no known cognates outside of Germanic. The only one who has since attempted to find cognates in this vein is Matasović, who links this root to Latin rīdeō (‘to laugh’). Pokorny and Lehmann suggest that the root is a d-extension of a Proto-Indo-European *wer- (‘to cut, scratch’), for which see Old Armenian գիր (gir, ‘letter; writing’) for more possible cognates. Latin rīma (‘cleft, crack’) may also continue this same root. However, as with the unrelated *wlītaną (q.v.), the extension may have been with a different dental consonant than *d in the case of back-influence from iterative *writtōną. Compare typologically Latin scribō, Ancient Greek σκάριφος (skáriphos) < Proto-Indo-European *(s)kreybʰ-; Ancient Greek γράφω (gráphō) < Proto-Indo-European *gerbʰ-; Russian начерта́ние (načertánije), черти́ть (čertítʹ) << Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker-.