Language Of Confusion: Gifts, Part I

It’s that season, where you literally can’t escape Christmas without locking yourself in the house and not going on the internet. Seriously, every two hours I get a notification from Amazon telling me to buy something. Anyway, gifts and the words related to it.
 
Gift showed up in the mid thirteenth century, coming from somewhere in Scandinavia as Old Norse has gift/gipt and then there’s the Proto Germanic geftiz, from the Proto Indo European root ghabh-, to give or receive. So, gift has been surprisingly consistent over the years.
 
There are a bunch of words from ghabh-, and most of them are going to seem weird. First of all, able. But not the suffix -able at the end of words like vegetable, which is not related at all. In fact, the only other word ending in able that’s related is disable. Able showed up in the early fourteenth century, from the Old French able, from the classical Latin habilem/habilis, which basically means handy or able. It’s actually from the verb habere, to have (or the record, not where have is from), which is from ghabh-. So first it dropped the G, then it dropped the H because it was silent.
 
And there’s habit, which is less surprising now that you’ve seen habere. It showed up in the early thirteenth century, but first it only meant religious attire, changing to mean a customary practice in the early fourteenth century. It’s from the Old French habit/abit, a religious habit, from the classical Latin habitus, demeanor or condition. And that’s from habere, too. There’s also habitat, which is fairly recent having shown up in 1762. It’s actually taken right from Latin word for lives as it was used by scientists for the habitats of flora and fauna. Habitat is just another version of habere. Funnily enough, inhabit is much older, having shown up in the late fourteenth century. It’s from the Old French enhabiter, and classical Latin inhabitare, to inhabit. Habitare actually means to live, and the in is from en and means in. Inhabit, to live in.
 
Then we have inhibit. It showed up in the early fifteenth century from inhibition, which is from the Old French inibicion and classical Latin inhibitionem. That’s from the verb inhibere, to hold back or check, with the in the same as above and the habere meaning to have and from ghabh-. Exhibit (mid fifteenth century) and prohibit (early fifteenth century) are the same with the ex- meaning out (holding something out is showing off, in a sense), and pro- meaning away or forth. Prohibiting is… holding forth.
 
Sources
Online Etymology Dictionary
Google Translate
Omniglot
University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center
University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language

Language of Confusion: It’s a Given

Because last week was Thanksgiving. Or something.

 

Give first showed up in Old Englishas giefan, with the same meaning (as in to give to someone), yet it actually appeared as yiven in Old English’s predecessor Middle English. The change to the hard g was from Norse influence, and probably the fact that yiven and giefan evolved from the Proto Germanicgebanan with a hard G. That word can be traced even further back to the ancient Proto Indo Europeanghabh (take, hold, have or give). This week’s “Can you believe they’re related” reveals that ghabh is also the origin word for habit. Weird? Yes, but habit comes from the classical Latin habitus, meaning demeanor or dress and the past participle of habere, “to have or hold”. The line from ghabh to there is a lot clearer now.

There’s also the alternate meaning of give, as in “give in”. There’s no obvious reason for the disparate meanings, but “give up” showed up in the twelfth century, give out in the fourteenth, and as in “give in” in the seventeenth, so it always seems to have had that meaning to it.

And we can’t forget about forgive. It showed up in Old English as, appropriately enough, forgiefan, which could mean “give or allow” as well as “forgive”, “give up” and “give away in marriage”. I’m kind of glad it’s lost that connotation. Anyway, the giefan part should be obvious by now but I don’t think we’ve ever talked about the prefix for- before (heh). As a prefix, for- can mean away, opposite, or completely. Since the whole for- thing could be a post of its own, let’s just say that forgive means “give completely”. That makes sense for most of the dropped definitions, but the current one was adopted basically as a substitute for pardon. Because for some reason, we needed another word for it.

TL;DR: Give and habit come from the same word from thousands of years ago and forgive was given a new meaning just because.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Tony Jebson’s page on The Origins of Old English

And both the University of Texas  and the University of Texas at San Antonio