As soon as I said this noun this morning, I wondered about its origin.

The goal of this blog post is to promote curiosity about words.

“Freckle” is one of those words that made me curious, so I had to research its origin in a dictionary.

“Freckle” is a word that does not sound like most other English words — at least, not to me.

Sure enough, when I researched its origin, I confirmed that “freckle” does not come from French or German or one of the other dominant influences on English.

Instead, it seems to come from the Old Norse word “frekna”, a word that persists today in Norwegian and Icelandic, and a word that became “fräkna” in Swedish.

What words in English have made you wonder about their origins? Let me know!