Twig comes from Old English twig, twigge ('twig, branch, shoot'), from Proto-Germanic *twigga, ultimately from a Proto-Indo-European base *dwo- ('two'), the original sense being a forked branch. The historical chain includes Old English twig, Proto-Germanic *twigga, and Proto-Indo-European *dwoh. The quoted older senses, "twig, branch, shoot" and "two", supply the semantic anchors for twig. The formation is best read as borrowed: the word twig carries its older form-history into a compact English lexical shape. In present English it is used as a noun, "a small thin shoot growing from a branch or stem". English derivatives include twiggy; related English forms include branch. The result is a noun and verb whose etymology preserves both the older form and the later English specialization.