gaiter: [18] Etymologically as well as semantically, gaiter is an ‘ankle covering’. It comes from French guêtre ‘gaiter’, which may well have been formed from Germanic *wirst-. This denoted ‘twist, turn’, and it has several modern derivatives which mean essentially ‘twisting joint’: German rist, for example, which has now migrated anatomically to the ‘instep’ and the ‘back of the hand’, originally signified ‘ankle, wrist’, and although English wrist now refers only to the hand/arm joint, it was formerly used dialectally for the ‘ankle’. => wrist
gaiter (n.)
"leather cover for the ankle," 1775, from French guêtre "belonging to peasant attire," of unknown origin; perhaps from Middle French *guestre, from Frankish *wrist "instep," from Proto-Germanic *wirstiz (source also of German Rist "instep;" see wrist (n.)). Related: Gaiters; gaitered (1760).
