Why Do The Words Import And Important Have Such Different Meanings?

They sound like they ought to have more similar meanings, don't they?

Import, in the late medieval ages, meant to "convey important information", or simply to notify someone of something. The key part of this is "convey", to transport information. So eventually an import became either the action of conveying, or the item itself that had been conveyed, originally a bit of information, and later a thing that had been conveyed from the outside in.. eventually, from outside one's own country.

Important -- refers to something that must be conveyed, again. This information is something you must know about -- it is news, it is information of consequence conveyed to you, it is "important".

At the route of the words is the Latin word importare, which again, meant to convey or carry.

Port still has meaning in English as a site of conveyance. Also think of portal, portcullis (a type of gate), porthole (ship window) and portmanteau (a type of suitcase).

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