Meaning: give

Illustrative Context

He gave her a knife.

Target Sense

• The most generic transitive verb for somebody giving an object to somebody else.
• The lexeme must be applicable to the prototypical case of an object being passed directly from giver to recipient, and from hand to hand, rather than indirectly. (Many languages may also use their default term in wider ranges of contexts.)
• The target sense is simply the transfer of an object from one person to another, without any other, more specific senses or implications of any sort, such as the motivation, purpose, or moral judgement of that act of giving something. Avoid, for example, terms specific to giving seen as a charitable act, e.g. donate.
• Avoid terms with specific implications of (transfer of) ownership or (temporary) use. I.e., avoid terms specific to whether the giving is either temporary (e.g. lend) or permanent, for the recipient to keep.
• Avoid terms specific to gift-giving, where different. So in German, for example, the generic lexeme is not schenken but generic geben.
• Avoid terms specific to particular types of thing given, e.g. money.
• Avoid terms specific to the particular manner in which a thing is given, or the conditions under which it is given: e.g. _hand over, give up, pass (on).