Etymology

Formally ME sake continues OE sacu ‘conflict, strife, war, battle, feud, sedition, dispute; reproof; affliction, persecution, trial; sin, fault; prosecution, lawsuit, action’, an ō-stem n. derived on the root of the PGmc str. v. *sakan- and cognate with OIcel sǫk, OFris seke, OS saca, OHG sahha. Its ME and PDE use in the phrase for (someone’s) sake is not found in OE, but has an exact analogue in ON, cp. OIcel fyrir (…) sakir, and ON influence is therefore often cited (thus TGD, GDS). OED also allows for the possibility of ON influence, but notes that the same idiom is recorded in OHG and OFris, ‘and there is a possibility that it may have been in OE.’

PGmc Ancestor

*sak-

Proposed ON Etymon (OIcel representative)

sǫk 'charge, offence; suit; effect; cause'; fyrir (…) sakir 'for the sake of (someone or thing)'
(ONP sǫk (sb.))

Other Scandinavian Reflexes

Far søk, Icel sǫk, Norw sak, sok, Dan sag, Sw sak

OE Cognate

OE sacu ‘conflict, strife, war, battle, feud, sedition, dispute; reproof; affliction, persecution, trial; sin, fault; prosecution, lawsuit, action’

Phonological and morphological markers

Summary category

CC4a

Attestation

The phrase is common and widespread from early ME; MED’s first citation comes from c1200 Wor.Serm.in EGSt.7 (Wor Q.29).

Occurrences in the Gersum Corpus

Gaw 537, 997, 1862 etc.; Pe 940; Cl 922; Pat 172; Erk 239; WA 5, 1813, 2022 etc.

Bibliography

MED sāke (n.) , OED sake (n.1) , HTOED , Dance sake, de Vries sǫk, Mag. sök, Bj-L sak, Bammesberger 109, Seebold sak-a-, Orel *sakō, Kroonen *sakō-, AEW sacu