Other forms: thongs
A thong is a narrow strip of leather used as a fastening. A leather thong, tie it with a thong, a thong around his neck.
The word has two very different modern lives: the underwear, and in Australia the rubber sandal that Britain calls a flip-flop. The original sense is simply a leather strip, and it is the oldest fastening there is. Note the Old English thwang.
1nounthongA narrow strip of leather used as a fastening.
“The sandals were held on by a thin leather thong tied round the ankle.”
thong is a strip.
Old English thwang means a strap or thong, from a Germanic root about binding.
Proto-Indo-European
*twenk- — to squeeze, press, pressure
Proto-Germanic
*þwangiz
Proto-West Germanic
*þwangi
Old English
þwong
Middle English
thong
English, today
thong
Built from
From Middle English thong, thwong, thwang, from Old English þwong, þwang (“thong, band, strap, cord, strip of leather; phylactery”), from Proto-West Germanic þwangi, from Proto-Germanic þwangiz, þwanguz (“coercion, constraint, band, clamp, strap”), from Proto-Indo-European twenk- (“to squeeze, press, pressure”). Cognate with Scots thwang, thwayng, thang (“thong”), Middle Low German dwenge (“clamp, jaws, steel-trap”), {{cog|de|
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA