means A knot is an interlacing of rope, string, or cord drawn tight to fasten, secure, or bind — or, by extension, any tangled, twisted, or hard-to-undo mass.

from From Old English 'cnotta,' a knot or fastening, descending from a Germanic root also behind Dutch 'knot' and German 'Knoten.' That hard initial 'kn-' was once fully pronounced — your ancestors really did say the 'k' before English quietly swallowed it. The nautical 'knot' meaning speed comes from a clever old trick: sailors trailed a 'log-line' studded with evenly spaced knots, counted how many slipped overboard in a timed interval, and let the rope literally measure their pace.