Forget: A Common Word with an Unusual Pedigree

Such a simple and commonplace word, and yet it has a moderately complex history. Intriguingly, it has almost been forgotten despite being not only a common and workaday term, but also a uniquely distinct word — a peculiarity in the English language.

The word is believed to have originated from the Proto-West Germanic term ‘fragetan’, meaning to give up, to lose hold of or, more specifically, lose hold of within one’s mind.

‘Forget’ is one of our oldest words still in common use today. The earliest known use of the verb form dates prior to 1150. As ‘forgietan’, it meant to lose the power of recalling to the mind, to fail to remember, or to neglect inadvertently.

The word is a combination of ‘for’ — which in earlier times meant to force away, amiss, to the opposite — and of ‘get’. ‘Get’ stems from the Proto Germanic ‘gietan’ meaning “to grasp”. In this joining we find the sense of “un-getting”, that is “losing” from the mind.

‘Get’ comes to us also by way of Old Norse ‘geta’, which meant ‘to get’ as described above, but also signified ‘to guess’. Perhaps if one does not remember, one can always guess?

What is especially odd, and confirmed by the OED, is that the historic physical sense of “to lose (one's) grip on” is not recorded in any historical Germanic language. Only English made the leap from the mental to the physical, at least metaphorically.

Although not related to the English etymology of the word, there is an interesting connection made in Egyptian Arabic. The word ‘insan’ means ‘human’, and if one removes the last letter of the word it becomes ‘insa’ which means ‘to forget’. Consequently, some Arabic scholars and philosophers assert that ‘forget’ comes from the word for ‘human’. They further take this to mean that Allah, knowing humans were inclined to forget their errors and so be destined to repeat them, taught that one should seek to improve memory, and so develop wisdom. This seems an intriguing notion.

Lastly, and perhaps more indicative of the power and ingrained quality of ‘forget’, there do not appear to be any straightforward, alternative, stand-alone words in English that can be used as a substitute. The thesaurus lists all sorts of possibilities like “dismiss from mind” or “draw a blank”, but unlike most English core terms, there are no other single word options.

Unless, of course, we forgot.