Giefan

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To bestow or present something voluntarily; to grant or offer freely to another; to provide or supply as a gift or favor
2. To willingly transfer possession or ownership; to consciously give something to someone else; to hand over or allocate as a voluntary act
3. To commit an act of offering or donating; to freely deliver or confer something upon another individual; to furnish or award through intentional action

Etymology: Old English "giefan" meant "to give," and it is the direct ancestor of the modern verb "give." Its roots reach back to a Proto-Germanic form, and the word was already common in the earliest English texts, so it was never a borrowing. Its vowel and consonant shapes changed over the centuries, with the "g" softening and the vowel shifting until "giefan" became "yeven" in Middle English and then "give" in the early modern period. The verb is one of the oldest words of the English core vocabulary, which is why it appears so often in the Anglo-Saxon Gospels and other religious texts, where it renders Latin "dare" and "donare." Its sense of freely handing something over was central from the start, and the word carried this everyday generosity into almost every corner of the language.