afford

This one started life as a plain old motion word: ‘forth,’ as in pushing something ahead. In Old English, ġeforðian meant to further, accomplish, or carry out — the verbal equivalent of shoving a cart over a muddy road. By the late 1300s, English speakers had nudged it toward money and capacity: if you could ‘afford’ something, you had enough muscle in the purse to push it through. Then, in the 16th century, scribes got nervous and dressed it up with an extra a- at the front, as if it were some respectable Latin loanword; a neat little mistake, like putting a silk hat on a farmhand. That same family gives us burden, where -d replaced -th in another old English word, so afford is basically one of those linguistic hand-me-downs that ended up wearing the wrong coat and still looked better for it.