vaffel.

Borrowed from Middle Low German wafel (“waffle; waffle iron”), whose basic meaning referred to a cake or baking iron patterned like a honeycomb. The Middle Low German word is possibly derived from Old High German wabo (“honeycomb”) or waba, and is related to veve (“to weave”), German weben, Dutch weven and English weave. The probable semantic development was “woven or interlaced structure” → “honeycomb or honeycomb pattern” → “patterned baking iron” → “the cake baked in it”. The needlework sense is a shortening of vaffelsøm (“waffle stitch”), while the carpet-underlay sense is a shortening of sviktvaffel (“waffle-patterned carpet underlay”). Both are named after their characteristic grid pattern. The word is documented in Norwegian by 1737 in the compound Vaffel Kagjern (“waffle-cake irons”) in a probate inventory from Alstahaug. Compare Danish vaffel, Swedish våffla, Dutch wafel, German Waffel, English waffle and French gaufre (“waffle”).

Borrowed from German Waffel (“blow to the mouth”), from a dialectal sense whose original meaning was “large, hanging mouth”, related to dialectal German Waffe (“large mouth”) and waffen, wafen (“to talk, howl”), probably ultimately onomatopoeic. It is historically separate from Etymology 1, although the two words have probably often been associated with one another. First attested in 1834 in the expression en varm vaffel (“a hard slap; a box on the ear”). Compare Dutch wafel (“blow to the mouth, slap”).