bridge

Bridge comes from Middle English brigge, from Old English brycġ, tracing back through Proto-West Germanic and Proto-Germanic to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning 'wooden flooring, decking, bridge.' The verb form comes from Old English brycġian, meaning 'to bridge, make a causeway, pave,' built directly from the noun.

The word has stayed remarkably close to its root sense of a wooden structure for crossing or paving, with the verb simply putting that noun into action. Its use for the part of a stringed instrument is a separate, later borrowing — a semantic loan from German Steg, itself from Old High German steg. Interestingly, the card game 'bridge' has no connection to any of this: it likely comes from the earlier game name biritch, possibly from Russian or Turkish.

It's cognate with Dutch brug, German Brücke, and Swedish brygga — though in the Scandinavian languages the word drifted toward meaning 'jetty' or 'pier' rather than a span over land.