take (English)

Where does "take" come from?

The English noun take descends through Middle English 'taken' and Old English 'tacan'[1], which was borrowed from Old Norse 'taka' meaning 'to touch, take'[4]. These trace back to Proto-Germanic '*tēkaną' meaning 'to touch'[1], with roots ultimately reaching back to Proto-Indo-European formations related to touching[5]. Over time, this term gradually displaced the native Old English word 'nim', meaning 'to take'[1].

Open questions

The derivation from Proto-Indo-European involves complex phonetic shifts and borrowing hypotheses between pre-Germanic and pre-Tocharian. [5]
The Old English form 'tacan' is considered a late borrowing around the year 1100 from Old Norse. [4]

Full etymology tree

take (English), 'The or an act of taking.'
- inherited taken (Middle English), 'to take'
  - inherited tacan (Old English), 'to take'
    - borrowed taka (Old Norse), 'to take'
      - inherited (North Germanic)
        inherited *tēkaną (Proto-Germanic), 'to touch'
        derived *deh₁g- (Pre-Germanic)
        derived *te-th₂g- (Proto-Indo-European)

Ancestors

*teh₂g- (Proto-Indo-European)
taken (Middle English)
tacan (Old English)
taka (Old Norse)
*tēkaną (Proto-Germanic)

Cognates and doublets

tage (Danish)
taken (Dutch)
ta (Norwegian Bokmål)
taka (Norwegian Nynorsk)
tak (Scots)
ta (Swedish)

Descendants and derived words

double take (English)
double-take (English)
give and take (English)
hot take (English)
land-take (English)
long take (English)
mickey-take (English)
mickey-take (English)
on the take (English)
piss-take (English)
piss-take (English)
take-or-pay (English)

Sources

Updated September 2026

More words starting with T

Etymology data from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · About Miraris