wrestle

Wrestle comes from Middle English wrestlen/wrastlen, from Old English wrǣstlian, itself a frequentative form of wrǣstan ("to twist, wrest"). That traces back through Proto-Germanic *wraistijaną to the Proto-Indo-European root *wreyt-, meaning "to twist."

The Old English root already carried the sense of twisting and turning, and the frequentative form wrǣstlian sharpened that into repeated twisting — the physical grappling of combat or sport. Middle English kept both senses alive, using the word for wriggling and writhing as well as for figurative struggle.

It's probably related to the dialectal English word wraxle, and shares its root with cognates like Dutch worstelen and West Frisian wrakselje, all built on the same old idea of twisting.