Give is a native word wearing a Norse pronunciation. Old English had giefan, and by the ordinary sound changes it should have come through Middle English as yiven — and for a while it did. Then contact with Old Norse gefa pulled the initial consonant back to a hard g, which is what modern English inherited. So this is not a Norse borrowing but a native word bent into Norse shape by the same contact.
That kind of interference is the hardest thing to spot in English vocabulary, because it leaves no foreign-looking residue: give looks exactly as native as it is. The lesson for reading spellings is that a hard g before a front vowel is evidence of Scandinavian involvement, but the involvement might be a full borrowing, as with get and gift, or just a nudge, as here.
give (v.) Old English giefan (West Saxon) "to give, bestow, deliver to another; allot, grant; commit, devote, entrust," class V strong verb (past tense geaf , past participle giefen ), from Proto-Germanic *geban (source also of Old Frisian jeva , Middle Dutch gheven , Dutch geven , Old High German geban , German geben , Gothic giban ), from PIE root *ghabh- "to give or receive." It became yiven in Middle English, but changed to guttural "g" by influence of Old Norse gefa "to give," Old Danish givæ . Meaning "to yield to pressure" is from 1570s. Give in "yield" is from 1610s; give out is mid-14c. as "publish, announce;" meaning "run out, break down" is from 1520s. Give up "surrender, resign, quit" is mid-12c. To give (someone) a cold seems to reflect the old belief that one could be cured of disease by deliberately infecting others. What gives? "what is happening?" is attested from 1940. To not give a (some thing regarded as trivial and valueless) is from c. 1300 (early examples were a straw , a grass , a mite ). give (n.) "capacity for yielding to pressure," 1868, from give (v.). The Middle English noun yeve , meant "that which is given or offered; a contribution of money," often as tribute, or in expectation of something in return. also from 1868
give came in through Old Norse, and its spelling follows that family's conventions.
How that family writes these sounds
| hard /g/ or /k/ before e or i | plain g or k. A native word would have softened here, so the hard sound is the loanget, give, gift, kid |
What gives it away on the page
| hard g or k before e/i | Native words palatalised here — the same root gives yield, yell.get, give, gift, kid |
Old Norse in the spelling guide · guess another word's family