Origin and history of gif

was "to lose savor" (late 14c. in Middle English past participle fonnyd), which may be the original meaning of the word: Gif...

case that; granting, allowing, or supposing that; on condition that;" also "although, notwithstanding that," Old English gif...

Lord, hou schulde God approve þat þou robbe Petur, and gif þis robbere to Poule in þe name of Crist?...

Sleep with "do the sex act with" is in Old English: Gif hwa fæmnan beswice unbeweddode, and hire mid slæpe ......

early 14c., chalenge, "something one can be accused of, a fault, blemish;" mid-14c., "false accusation, malicious charge; accusation of wrong-doing," also "act of laying claim" (to something), from Anglo-French chalenge, Old French chalonge "calumny, slander; demand, opposition,"

also brownnose, "try excessively to make a good impression on one with authority," 1939, American English colloquial, said to be military slang originally, from brown (adj.) + nose (n.), "from the implication that servility is tantamount to having one's nose in the anus of the pe

1520s, "to covertly and subtly introduce into the mind or heart" (trans.), from Latin insinuatus, past participle of insinuare "to thrust in, push in, make a way; creep in, intrude, bring in by windings and curvings, wind one's way into," from in- "in" (from PIE root *en "in") +

late 15c., perpendiculer, of a line, "lying at right angles to the horizon" (in astronomy, navigation, etc.), from an earlier adverb (late 14c.), "at right angles to the horizon," from Old French perpendiculer, from Late Latin perpendicularis "vertical, as a plumb line," from Lat

c. 1300, "be subject to" (obsolete); early 14c., "direct one's mind or energies" (archaic), from Old French atendre "to expect, wait for, pay attention" (12c., Modern French attendre) and directly from Latin attendere "give heed to," literally "to stretch toward," from ad "to, to

1530, "goat sent into the wilderness on the Day of Atonement as a symbolic bearer of the sins of the people," coined by Tyndale from scape, a shortening of escape (see scape (v.)) + goat; the whole word translating Latin caper emissarius, itself a translation in Vulgate of Hebrew