Other forms: anchored, anchors, anchoring
An anchor is the heavy metal hook a ship drops to hold itself in one place. Chain out, flukes dug into the seabed.
The verb comes with it, and a ship anchors, weighs anchor when leaving, and lies at anchor while waiting. The figurative sense is warm, since an anchor is anything that keeps you steady, and a person can be the anchor of a family. American broadcasting uses the word for the main presenter of a news programme, who anchors it. In climbing, an anchor is the fixed point a rope is secured to.
Middle English
anker
English, today
anchor
From Middle English anker. From Middle English anker, from Old English ancor, ancra, from Latin ancora, from (or cognate with) Ancient Greek ἄγκυρα. The modern form is a sixteenth-century modification after the Medieval Latin - spelling anchora. a doublet of ancora and anker and angora and Ankara.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA