The term cringe has a long history. Its first modern use as a noun dates back to the 1570s, and as a verb, to the thirteenth century. However, before that, it had various definitions and spellings. In Middle and Old English, it appeared as crinchen, crenchen, crengen, crencan, crencgan, crengan, and crenge, meaning “bend”, “bow”, “turn”, and “cause to fall”. Its origin can be traced back to the Proto-Germanic reconstruction kenk, meaning “curl up”, and ultimately comes from Proto-Indo-European greng, which means “to turn”. More recently, in meme culture, cringe has been used to express disgust towards something, typically a particular fandom. This shift in meaning began in 2013, leading to a resurgence of the word’s usage in literature and an increase in Google searches for it over time.
