1981: Hand: Give and Take in PIE May 18, 2020

The word 'prehensile', which usually refers to animal limbs that can grasp, and can tell us a lot about words in general. It comes from Latin participle 'hendō' (though never attested without a prefix) meaning 'I take', and is taken to come from the Proto-Indo-European *gʰed-, which gave English 'get'. It also gave (handed, even) Modern English 'hand' but also the Old English 'mund', which, despite sharing spelling with the German word for 'mouth', means 'hand', like the Latin 'manus' (hand). There are literally dozens more words that could go along this list for Modern English alone, including 'hedera' (another name for ivy), but what might be the most interesting point is that while, as exhibited before, 'hand' as a verb usually means 'to give', it originally, along with these other meanings, meant 'to take, which has been written about here before, and for lots of different cases.

Suport Word Facts on patreon.com/wordfacts