Especially at this time of year, the ubiquitous season of giving, we’ll hear and use the words “gift” and “present” interchangeably. They are synonymns, of course, but how did that come to be?

We find out from dictionary.com, which argues that language is not a linear, predestined development, meaning that although the language we speak is in some way the logical conclusion of thousands of years of development, each word has a unique, sometimes circuitous history.

Here is what we’ve found on the histories and meanings of these two words.

GIFT

The word gift wandered through multiple meanings before arriving at its current common meaning: “Something given voluntarily without payment in return, as to show favour toward someone, honour an occasion, or make a gesture of assistance”. In Old English, its most dominant meaning was “payment for a wife”, or a dowry. Yikes!

“Gift” originates in the Proto-Indo-European base “ghabh”, which came from the Sanskrit word “gabhasti” meaning “hand or forearm”. (Gabhasti is also the root of the word habit.)

While “gift” became associated only with marriage payments, the related verb, “give”, followed a different trajectory of meaning; denoting the specific act of putting something in someone else’s hands, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Around the 1300s, the word gift began to assume a more general meaning of “an object freely given to another person”.

A more recent evolution of the term came in the popular word regift. The word refers to the common practice of giving away a gift that you received from someone else, like candles, bubble bath, and ugly slippers.

PRESENT

“Present” was imported into English from Old Norman (also called Old French). As a noun, it originally meant the same thing as the adjective, that is: “being there”. It was used in the French phrase “mettre en present” to mean “to offer in the presence of”.

By the early 1300s, it became synonymous with the thing being offered. (“Present” did not acquire the sense of “the present time” until the 1500s.)

OTHER OPTIONS?

If neither “gift” nor “present” speak to you, there are plenty of other terms to spice up the holiday season:

• lagniappe

• succour

• potlatch

• bonhomie

• beneficence