Saying is from a noun use of the gerund of say, from Old English secgan ('to speak, tell'), from Proto-Germanic *sagjaną, from Proto-Indo-European *sekʷ- ('to say, point out'). The historical chain includes Old English secgan and Proto-Indo-European *sekʷ-. Older glosses in the chain include "to speak, tell" and "to say, point out", which help explain the semantic range of the modern word. Morphologically, saying is best read as borrowing, yielding an English noun shaped by both form history and later usage. In current English it functions as a noun, with the sense "a short, well-known expression conveying a general truth". related forms include say and saw. The result is an English noun whose etymology preserves the older forms while supporting the word's specialized modern meaning.