Other forms: intakes
Intake is what is taken in, and the opening it comes through. Daily intake, the air intake, this year's intake.
It covers three quite different things — food eaten, air drawn in, and people admitted to a school or a course in one year. All three come from the plain phrase take in. It is a northern English and Scots formation.
1nounintakeWhat is taken in, or the opening it comes through.
“The doctor told him to reduce his intake of salt.”
intake is an amount, or an opening.
A noun made from the phrase take in, first in northern English and Scots dialect.
Proto-Indo-European
*teh₂g- — to touch, take
Proto-Germanic
*tēkaną — to touch
Proto-West Germanic
*takan — to take; grasp, touch
Old Norse
taka — to touch, take
Old English
tacan — to grasp, touch
Middle English
taken — to take, lay hold of, grasp, strike
English
take
English, today
intake
From English dialectal (Northern England/Scotland), deverbal of take in, equivalent to in + take. More at in-, take. take comes from Middle English taken (“to take, lay hold of, grasp, strike”), from Old English tacan (“to grasp, touch”), probably of gmq origin, from Old Norse taka (“to touch, take”). Alternatively, inherited from Proto-West Germanic takan (“to take; grasp, touch”). Both from Proto-Germanic tēkaną (“to touch”), from pre-Germanic deh₁g- (“to touch”), possibly a phonetically altered form of Proto-Indo-European teh₂g- (“to touch, take”) (see there for details). Gradually displaced native nim, from nimen, from Old English niman (“to take”). Cognates
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA