Thig

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To solicit charity or beg for food and money
2. To ask for alms or make a request for help as a beggar would
3. To beg or request assistance from someone in a pleading manner

Etymology: "Thig" is a Scottish and northern English verb meaning to beg, or to take food and drink as a guest or pauper, and its roots reach back to the Germanic word for receiving. Old English "þiċġan" meant to take, receive, accept, and also to eat or drink, so the sense of partaking of food is the oldest layer of the word. Middle English "thiggen" carried these senses forward into the centuries before the Scots forms emerged. The sense of begging grew out of that idea of receiving. To receive something freely from someone else can easily shade into asking for it, and that is the direction "thig" took in later use. Its cousins show the same pattern: German "digen" and Middle High German "digen" both meant to beg or beseech, while Swedish "tigga" means to beg or mooch and Icelandic "þiggja" means to get, receive, or accept. The shared sense of receiving runs through the whole family, with begging as one branch of it.

Synonyms: beg, solicit, request

Antonyms: give, donate