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: Gifts

Tis the season, right? Let’s look at where some gifts come from.

Gift showed up in the mid thirteenth century, I assume after give, although give doesn’t actually have a date of origin. Gift is thought to be Scandinavian in origin, like the Old Norse gift/gipt, gift, and before that is definitely from the Proto Germanic geftiz, from geb-, to give, from the Proto Indo European root ghabh-, give or receive. And of course that’s where give is from, just with different word tenses. It’s from the Old English giefan, give, from the Proto Germanic geban, which is also from geb-.

Now let’s look at a common gift that’s given (ha!): game. It showed up in the thirteenth century from the Old English gamen/gamenian, joke or play. It’s descended from Proto Germanic, from two parts: ga-, a “collective prefix”, basically a prefix that indicates a collection/collective; and mann, which means person. So a gaman is a collection of people. And that’s how you have a game. In related words, gamy/gamey is related to game, originally meaning spirited, then morphing to having to do with taste in the sense of hunting wild game. However, there’s also a rarely used definition of game where it’s a synonym for lame, i.e. a game leg. That use of game is not related to the others, and is probably just some sort of slang.

Toy showed up in the fourteenth century meaning, ahem, “amorous playing”, or sport. It actually didn’t mean toy like we use it until the sixteenth century. Unfortunately, not much is known about its origin, and it may be a combination of several different words. There are some similar Germanic words, like the Dutch speeltuig, which means toy, and the Swedish tyg, which means fabric, but we really don’t know where toy came from.

Finally today, how about a type of toy? Like a doll. Doll showed up in the mid sixteenth century, but back then it was only a nickname for Dorothy. In the early seventeenth century, it became slang for a girlfriend or lover, but then by the mid sixteenth century, it basically meant a slut. And then somehow when the eighteenth century rolled around, it was used for a child’s toy baby, and by the end of the century, it was once again back to being used as a term for pretty or silly women, so in a slightly more favorable light. Of course, if you try to use it on a woman these days, you’re liable to get punched in the mouth (deservedly so) for being patronizing. Wow, this word really went on a crazy journey.

Sources

Online Etymology Dictionary

Google Translate

Omniglot

Dictionary.com

University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center

University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language

Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English

Old English-English Dictionary

A-to-Z Challenge: Gift

More etymology! Wheeeeee!

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

Online Etymology Dictionary

University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language

University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center

Google Translate