From Old Norse geta (to obtain, to beget, to guess), from Proto-Germanic *getaną (to get, to seize), from PIE root *gʰed- (to seize, to takehold of). The Old Norse word displaced the cognate Old English gietan during the Danelaw period (9th–11th centuries), when Norse-speakingsettlers reshaped the vocabulary of northern England. Both Old Norse geta and Old English gietan derived from the same Germanic ancestor, but it was the Norse form that survived in the modern language. The PIE root *gʰed- also underlies
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English 'forget' is literally 'for-get' — the prefix 'for-' meaning 'away, astray' combined with 'get' (to grasp), so 'forget' originally meant 'to lose one's grasp on' something.
verb conjugation. The word's semantic range — to get an idea, to get sick, to get going — expanded dramatically in Middle and Early Modern English. Key roots: *gʰed- (Proto-Indo-European: "to seize, to take").