alt Hacker NewsRemove Ver, add t and you got German: Gift
Vergiftet would be past tense.
Funny that in English gift is a word but entirely different meaning.
Languages are fun, especially in Europe where they're all different but all so related but everyone does not want to admit it.
Replies
> Funny that in English gift is a word but entirely different meaning.
In English it maintains its original Germanic meaning derived from the verb give.
The sense of "poison" in German comes from a euphemistic use of "gift". (Literally 'something given' but actually used to calque Greek "dosis", which also literally meant 'something given', but was used to mean 'dose [of medicine]'.)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Gift#Etymology
Summing up, the reason gift is a word in English with an entirely different meaning from what it has in German is that everyone in Germany forgot what gift meant.
(The reason it's gift and not something more like yift is the Danelaw.)
In Norwegian, "gift" is poison. It's also the word for married (de er gift).
> all so related but everyone does not want to admit it.
I'm laughing in Finnish..
It's probably the same, for example in Afrikaans its just gif. Vergif is the verb action of doing it, and vergiftig the same past tense of it having happened previously.