make
Definitions
General English
- verb to produce or build something
- verb to get something ready
- verb to add up to a total
- verb to give someone a particular feeling
- verb to force someone to do something
Accounting
Banking
- verb to do an action
Commerce
- noun a brand or type of product manufactured
Electronics
- To close a circuit, or a closed circuit. Closing a circuit enables the flow of current.
- In a switch or relay, to close or produce contact.
- To produce, bring about, form, cause to exist, attain, or the like.
Slang
- noun a sex partner. The term is a back-formation from the sexual sense of the verb make, on the same principle as lay.
- verb to identify, recognise (a suspect or adversary). A piece of police and criminal jargon well known from its use in fiction, TV and films.
- verb to have sex with, seduce. This euphemism from the turn of the 20th century, although understood, has never caught on in Britain or Australia. It has occasionally been adopted by individuals, including the philosopher Bertrand Russell.
Origin & History of “make”
Make probably goes back ultimately to an Indo-European base *mag- denoting ‘kneading’ (also the source of Greek mágma ‘salve made by kneading’, from which English gets magma (15th c.)). A prehistoric Germanic descendant was *mako- (source of English match ‘go together’). From this was derived the west Germanic verb *makōjan, which over the centuries differentiated into German machen, Dutch maken, and English make. Make was not a particularly common verb in Old English (gewyrcan, ancestor of modern English work, was the most usual way of expressing the notion ‘make’), but in the middle English period its use proliferated.
