An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/Annotated/Weizen
Weizen, masculine, ‘wheat,’ from Middle High German weitze, Old High German weizzi, masculine. The dialectic (unknown only in Bavarian?) variant Weißen (Swiss, Upper Swabian, Wetterau, Upper Hessian, Hennegau, and Thuringian) is based on Middle High German weiȥe, Old High German weiȥi (tz and sz interchanged in this word on account of the older inflectional interchange of tj and ti; compare reizen and heizen); hence Weißbrod as well as Weizen?. Corresponding to the equivalent Gothic hwaiteis (dative hwaitja), Old Icelandic hveite, Anglo-Saxon hwœ̂te, English wheat, Dutch weit, Old Saxon hwêti. Lithuanian kvëtẏs, ‘grains of wheat,’ is borrowed from Teutonic. Weizen is rightly regarded, on account of the white flour, as a derivative of weiß (compare Sanscrit çvitnyá çvêtá, ‘white’).