The story
- Old Norse · derived fromgapa“to gape”
- Middle English · derived fromgapen
- English todaygape
From Middle English gapen, from Old Norse gapa (“to gape”) (compare Swedish gapa, Danish gabe), from Proto-Germanic *gapōną (descendants Middle English geapen, Dutch gapen, German gaffen), perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰеh₂b-. Cognates include Russian зяпа (zjapa). Doublet of gap.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.