Origins
The English verb 'take' has an origin story unlike most core English vocabulary: it is not a native Old English word but a loanword from Old Norse, borrowed during the period of intense Scandinavian settlement in England between the ninth and eleventh centuries. It comes from Old Norse 'taka' (to take, seize, grasp), which derives from Proto-Germanic *tēkōną or *takōną. The further etymology is debated — some scholars connect it to PIE *deh₁g- ('to touch'), while others suspect it may derive from a pre-Germanic substrate language.
The word that 'take' replaced was Old English 'niman' (to take, seize, receive), a well-established strong verb from Proto-Germanic *nemaną, cognate with German 'nehmen' (to take), Dutch 'nemen,' and Gothic 'niman.' The displacement of 'niman' by the Norse 'take' is one of the most striking examples of lexical replacement in English history, because verbs meaning 'to take' belong to the absolute core of any language's vocabulary. That a borrowed word could push out a native word at this level of basicness testifies to the extraordinary depth of Norse-English contact in the Danelaw.
The replacement was not instantaneous. In early Middle English texts, 'nimen' and 'taken' coexisted, sometimes in the same text. The Ormulum (c. 1170) uses both. But by the fourteenth century, 'take' had become dominant in most dialects, and by the fifteenth century, 'nim' had essentially vanished from standard English. Its last significant trace is the word 'nimble,' from Old English 'numol' (quick at seizing, capable of grasping), derived from 'niman' with an adjectival suffix.
Middle English
The phonological history of 'take' in English is relatively straightforward. The Old Norse 'taka' was adapted into Middle English as 'taken,' with the strong verb inflection 'took' (past tense) developing from the Norse past tense 'tók.' The past participle 'taken' preserves the Norse participial ending '-enn' in anglicized form. The vowel in 'take' underwent the Great Vowel Shift, moving from the Middle English /aː/ to Modern English /eɪ/.
Within the Scandinavian languages, cognates of 'taka' remain the standard word for 'take': Swedish 'ta' (shortened from 'taga'), Danish 'tage,' Norwegian 'ta,' Icelandic 'taka,' and Faroese 'taka.' The word is thus pan-Scandinavian, confirming that it was well-established in Norse before being exported to England.
The semantic range of 'take' in Modern English is vast, rivaling even 'go' and 'get' in the number of distinct senses catalogued in major dictionaries. It functions as a verb of acquisition ('take the book'), consumption ('take medicine'), transportation ('take the bus'), duration ('it takes time'), photography ('take a picture'), and dozens more. Phrasal verbs with 'take' are enormously productive: 'take off' (depart or remove), 'take on' (undertake or challenge), 'take over' (assume control), 'take in' (absorb or deceive), 'take up' (begin or occupy space), and 'take out' (remove or escort).
Cultural Impact
The compound 'mistake' illustrates an interesting formation: Middle English 'mistaken' meant 'to take wrongly' or 'to misapprehend,' from 'mis-' (wrongly) + 'taken' (to take). A mistake is literally a wrong taking — a seizure of the wrong idea. Similarly, 'undertake' (to take upon oneself), 'overtake' (to take beyond, to catch up), and 'partake' (to take part) all show 'take' functioning as a productive element in compound formation.
The Norse origin of 'take' is part of a broader pattern of Scandinavian loans that penetrated the deepest layers of English vocabulary. Other Norse words that replaced native English equivalents include 'they,' 'their,' 'them' (replacing native 'hie,' 'hiera,' 'him'), 'get' (partly replacing 'beginnan' in certain senses), 'call' (alongside native 'clipian'), and 'die' (replacing 'steorfan' in its general sense). That pronouns, basic verbs, and core vocabulary could be borrowed wholesale speaks to a level of bilingual contact far deeper than the more superficial lexical borrowing that characterizes most language contact situations.