Here’s a pair of words that are occasionally confused: “waive” (to voluntarily give up the right to something) and “waif” (an orphaned child — this one is a bit archaic at this point). The interesting thing about this pair of words is that although their meanings are quite distinct, ithey’re pretty closely related.
The words both arrived in English around the 1200s, coming from the same Norman French root. Nobody is completely sure about origins earlier then that, but there are some words in Old Norse that are pretty close, so it may originally be Scandinavian.
The oldest English citation found by the Oxford English Dictionary for “waive” comes from the Chronicle for 1297, published by somebody with the fairly impressive name Robert of Gloucester (I mean, was he the only Robert, the best one, or what?) At that time “waive” referred to outlawing a person. Another century later the meaning had expanded to include refusing something, disobeying a command, resisting temptation, give something up, or to “convey” something, as in transferring a gift or grant to someone else.
“Waif,” when it first appeared in the 1200s, referred to abandoned property. This meaning stuck for the next few centuries, and then in the 1600s it was was applied to people who lived on the fringes of society. By the 1700s a “waif” came to mean an abandoned person, and in particular a child.
Originally the main difference between “waive” and “waif” was simply that one was a verb and the other a noun — now, of course, you might not think they’re related at all, except that they look similar. You might be thinking that “wave” and “waver” might be somewhere in the same family tree too, and you’d be right! You have to go back a thousand years or so to find it, but the connection — probably — is that same Old Norse root.
