912: hoist and heist Jun 8, 2017

While normally the word lift means to pick up or raise in a general way, informally the word means 'to steal'. Although the exact word that became slang was fairly arbitrary, and might as well have been 'raise', the connotation lifting something up, and lifting something off of, say, a shelf in a store is fairly reasonable. Somewhat similarly, the word 'heist' evolved only recently in the mid 19th century from 'hoist'. 'Heist' does not have the double-meaning that 'lift' does, but that was only a matter of luck. Not only was 'heist' an alteration of 'hoist', but 'hoist' was originally an alteration of the verb 'hoise'. In that way, while 'hoist' now is a verb and a noun, in the famous line "hoist by his own petard" it is a participle, and could have been 'hoised'.