think: [OE] Think goes back to an Old English thencan. This was a variant of thyncan ‘seem, appear’, which survives in the archaic methinks (literally ‘it seems to me’), and so etymologically think probably carries the notion of ‘causing images, reflections, etc to appear to oneself, in one’s brain’. The noun thought comes from the same prehistoric Germanic base as produced the verb (as does English thank). Related Germanic forms include German and Dutch denken, Swedish tänka, and Danish tænke. => thank, thought
