Gift
nounSomething given willingly to someone without payment, especially to mark an occasion.
How to spell gift
4 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce gift
What does gift mean?
- nounSomething given willingly to someone without payment, especially to mark an occasion.
- verbTo give something to someone as a present, often formally or generously.
- nounA natural talent or special ability.
Gift in a sentence
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noun
She wrapped the birthday gift in silver paper.
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verb
Her parents plan to gift the cottage to the children.
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noun
She has a real gift for explaining difficult ideas clearly.
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noun
The company sent every customer a small gift at Christmas.
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verb
The foundation will gift the artwork to the national museum.
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noun
His gift for languages made the new job much easier.
Where does gift come from?
Language of origin: Old Norse
The word goes back to the same ancient Germanic root that gives us the verb 'give', built on a base meaning 'to hand over' or 'to grant'. Old English had the related form 'gift' chiefly in the sense of a payment for a bride, but the everyday modern meaning of a present was strongly reinforced by Old Norse 'gift' (or 'gipt'), brought to Britain by Scandinavian settlers. By the time of Middle English the word had settled firmly into the familiar sense of something handed over freely, with no expectation of return. A curious cousin in German is 'Gift', which today means 'poison', a chilling reminder that 'something given' was once neutral about whether the thing given was welcome. The spelling stays helpfully simple and phonetic, closely mirroring 'give', which makes it one of the more transparent words in English.
How the word is built
- gift (from Germanic root meaning a giving, related to 'give'); no affixes
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