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