Whittle
mid 16th century: from dialect whittle ‘knife’.
wiktionary
From Middle English whittel(“large knife”), an alteration of thwitel, itself from thwiten(“to whittle”), from Old English þwītan(“to strike down, whittle”), from Proto-Germanic *þwītaną, from Proto-Indo-European *tweys-(“to shake, hurl, toss”). Compare Old Norse þveita(“to hurl”), Ancient Greek σείω(seíō, “I shake”). Related to thwite and thwaite.
From Middle English whytel, from Old English hwitel, equivalent to white + -le; akin to an Icelandic word for a white bedcover.
etymonline
whittle (v.)
1550s, "to cut thin shavings from (something) with a knife," from Middle English whittel "a knife," especially a large one (c. 1400), variant of thwittle (late 14c.), from Old English þwitan "to cut," from Proto-Germanic *thwit- (source also of Old Norse þveita "to hew"), from PIE root *twei- "to agitate, shake, toss" (see seismo-). Figurative sense is attested from 1746. Related: Whittled; whittling.
