Same root though. In Dutch it wasn’t differentiated until recently so the same word has vastly different meanings between Afrikaans and Dutch. en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/gifte#Middle_Low_German
Comment on bugs
samus12345@lemmy.world 4 months agoIt’s an unfortunate false cognate that the word Gift means poison in English.
roguetrick@lemmy.world 4 months ago
samus12345@lemmy.world 4 months ago
The word has been used as a euphemism for “poison” since Old High German, a semantic loan from Late Latin dosis (“dose”), from Ancient Greek δόσις (dósis, “gift; dose of medicine”).
I wondered how the heck it got that meaning. Pretty strange to apply a term for giving something in general to poison specifically.
Username@feddit.de 4 months ago
Funnily there is also the word “Mitgift” (Dowry) that has nothing to do with poison at all.