ferry

The verb comes from Middle English ferien, from Old English ferian, from Proto-Germanic *farjaną — the causative form of the verb that gives us 'fare,' meaning 'to go, travel.' The noun ferie developed from that verb, shaped further by Old Norse ferja.

What began as an action — carrying someone across — settled into a noun naming both the crossing itself and the vessel that makes it.

It shares its root with 'fare,' since 'to ferry' originally meant to cause someone to go or travel, making fare and ferry two branches of the same Germanic verb. It only looks related to Latin ferō ('I carry') — that resemblance is coincidence, not shared ancestry.