Drink/Drank, Sink/Sank, Think/... thank?

English thank and think are cognate and come from the same Proto-Germanic root:

  • Proto-Germanic: þank- = thought, gratitude, mental consideration
  • Old English:
    • þencan = to think
    • þanc = thought, goodwill, gratitude

Originally, “thanks” was essentially “good thoughts” or “favourable remembrance”.

So when you thanked someone, the underlying idea was roughly:

“I will think well of you”
or
“I hold your deed in grateful thought”

My intuition:

“I recognise you thought of me”

And so, the vowel alternation is related to the same Germanic ablaut patterns seen in:

  • sing / sang
  • drink / drank
  • think / thought

Though thank is not literally the past tense of think, they are historically sibling forms produced by the same root-and-vowel-change system in Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Germanic.

Related words:

  • German Dank = thanks
  • German denken = think
  • Dutch danken / denken

So the cognitive link between thought and gratitude is ancient and deeply embedded in the Germanic languages. 

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