The origin of words: DENT

Dent dates back to the late 13th or early 14th century, and originally meant ‘a strike or blow’. It was a dialectal variant of the noun dint, which dates back to before the year 900, as the Old English dynt, which specifically meant ‘a blow dealt in a fight.’ It can be traced back to the Proto-Germanic word duntiz, and was related to the Old Norse dyntr (blow or kick). The meaning we use now, “indentation,’ including in a figurative sense, first appeared in the mid-16th century, due to the influence of the word indent. The verb dates back to the late 14th century, and comes from the noun. Its meaning changed around the same time as the noun’s.