last

Modern English has three separate words last, two of which are related. The adjective, meaning ‘after all others’, originated in prehistoric Germanic as the superlative form of late; its modern Germanic relatives include German letzt and Dutch laatst. The verb last ‘continue’ goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *laistjan ‘follow a track’, which also produced modern German leisten ‘perform, afford’. this was derived from *laisti-, as was ultimately the noun last, which in Old English meant ‘footprint’ (‘shoemaker’s model foot’ is a secondary development). The general semantic thread ‘following a track’ can be traced back further via Germanic *lais- (a variant of which gave English learn) to Indo-European *leis- (source of Latin dēlīrāre, literally ‘deviate from a straight track’, from which English gets delirious (18^th c.)).