nail

Nail comes from Middle English nail or nayl, from Old English næġl, from Proto-West Germanic *nagl, from Proto-Germanic *naglaz, from a Proto-Indo-European root *h₃nogʰ- meaning 'nail.' The verb form comes separately from Middle English naylen, from Old English næġlan.

The facts given don't trace a shift in meaning over time, only the steady descent of the word form itself from Old English into Middle English and beyond.

It's a close cousin of German and Low German Nagel, Dutch and Swedish nagel, and Danish and Norwegian negl, all pointing back to the same Germanic root — and further back, it shares ancestry with Latin unguis and Ancient Greek ónux, both meaning claw or nail.