I can hear your excitement from here.
My gift to you.
Gift is funny because it showed up in the twelfth century in
last names, but wasn’t a word until the mid-thirteenth century. It’s
also interesting because it’s an English word that doesn’t come to us by way of
French or Latin. It’s definitely Germanic in origin (there’s
gabe in German, gåva in Swedish, gave in Norwegian, etc.),
coming from the Proto Germanic giftiz. Further back, it can be
traced to the Proto Indo European ghabh-, give or receive (and in another
crazy origin story, that word is the ancestor of habit).
Sources
University of Texas at Austin
Linguistic Research Center
That's interesting word info that never occurred to me. My immediate thought was the saying "Never look a gift horse in the mouth." It's an odd saying that I can kind of guess what it's origins might have been, but I wonder if the word "gift" relates to that?
ReplyDeleteI'm now following your blog. This is a good series you're doing for A to Z. I like the educational aspect.
Lee
Wrote By Rote
An A to Z Co-host blog
You always come up with such interesting information. This is yet another word I never thought about the origins of. Thanks for the little lessons you give us.
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ReplyDeleteI'd be curious where present came from then.
ReplyDeleteAlex stole my comment! I wonder how those two are related (or if they are).
ReplyDeleteGava as a root word has a lovely ring to it.
ReplyDeleteInteresting. I haven't seen it in a last name so far.
ReplyDeleteWait, a word that means give or receive is that ancestor of habit? I don't even know how to decode that one. Language is so weird sometimes...
ReplyDeleteI like that gift and habit have something in common. Giving gifts should be a habit.
ReplyDeleteInteresting that gift and habit are related. I like Kate's idea about them. :)
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