late 14c., shortening of aweiward "turned away," from way (adv.), shortening of away + -ward. Related: Waywardly; waywardness.
Entries linking to wayward
way adv.
c. 1200, short for away (adv.). Many expressions involving this are modern and American English colloquial, such as way-out "far off;" way back "a long time ago" (1887); way off "quite wrong" (1892). Any or all of these might have led to the slang adverbial meaning "very, extremely," attested by 1984 (as in way cool).
-ward
adverbial suffix expressing direction, Old English -weard "toward," literally "turned toward," sometimes -weardes, with genitive singular ending of neuter adjectives, from Proto-Germanic *werda- (cognates: Old Saxon, Old Frisian -ward, Old Norse -verðr), variant of PIE *werto- "to turn, wind," from root *wer- (2) "to turn, bend." The original notion is of "turned toward."