Wench
Middle English: abbreviation of obsolete wenchel ‘child, servant, prostitute’; perhaps related to Old English wancol ‘unsteady, inconstant’.
wiktionary
The noun is derived from Middle English wench, wenche(“female baby; girl (especially unmarried); maiden, young woman; bondwoman; serving maid; beloved, sweetheart; concubine, mistress; harlot, prostitute”)[and other forms], [1] a shortened form of Middle English wenchel(“girl; maiden; child”), from Old English wenċel, winċel(“child; servant; slave”), [2] [3] from Proto-Germanic *wankilą, from Proto-Germanic *wankijaną(“to sway; waver”). The English word is cognate with Old High German wenken(“to waver; to give way, yield”), wankōn(“to totter”).
The verb [4] and adjective are derived from the noun.
etymonline
wench (n.)
late 13c., wenche "girl, young woman," especially if unmarried, also "female infant," shortened from wenchel "child," also in Middle English "girl, maiden," from Old English wencel, probably related to wancol "unsteady, fickle, weak," from Proto-Germanic *wankila- (source also of Old Norse vakr "child, weak person," Old High German wanchal "fickle"), from PIE *weng- "to bend, curve" (see wink (v.)).
The wenche is nat dead, but slepith. [Wyclif, Matthew ix.24, c. 1380]
In Middle English occasionally with disparaging suggestion, and secondary sense of "concubine, strumpet" is attested by mid-14c. Also "serving-maid, bondwoman, young woman of a humble class" (late 14c.), a sense retained in the 19c. U.S. South in reference to slave women of any age. In Shakespeare's day a female flax-worker could be a flax-wench, flax-wife, or flax-woman.
wench (v.)
"to associate with common women," 1590s, from wench (n.). Related: Wenched; wencher; wenching.
