Lie as in not true first appeared as
a verb in the late twelfth century,
while the noun didn’t show up until the end of the seventeenth century. It
comes from the Old English legan/ligan and its earlier incarnation leogan, all of which had the same basic
meaning we know it as. Further back in Proto Germanic,
the word is leugan (the g is still
present in other Germanic languages, like Dutch and of course German) and even
further back, we have the Proto Indo European leugh, to tell a lie. And I promise,
I’m telling the truth. : )
And we all know the word liar, which
is what’s known as an agent noun,
a word for a person who does something (writer from write, for example). It
came into existence in the early thirteenth century,
from the Old English leogere, also liar.
It doesn’t seem to have a version in Proto Germanic. Instead it seems to have
evolved from the West Saxon (southern England, one of the most popular dialects before the
Norman invasion in 1066) leogan and the Anglian (northern England, consisting of all the dialects of Mercia and Northumbria)
legan, words meaning to lie. The word
seems to have appeared because people wanted something to call people who tell
untruths. I guess the middle ages were as long as they could go without it.
Then we have the other kind of lie,
the one that gives us all the trouble with its tenses. It showed up in the early
twelfth century from the Old English licgan,
meaning it was similar to the word for lie even then. It evolved from Proto
Germanic as well, coming from legjanan,
to lie or lay. Lay, as in lay something down, has a very similar etymology. It
comes from the Old English lecgan,
with an e,
which evolved from the Proto Germanic lagjanan,
with an a. So apparently the confusion existed even a thousand years ago.
No one ever said languages evolve in
a way that makes sense. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve been saying the opposite
ever since I started these things.
Sources
Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English
University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language
