fare

First recorded before 1000; Middle English faren, Old English faran; cognate with German fahren, Old Norse fara, Gothic faran; akin to emporium, port⁵, pram²

4. See food.

The English noun fare derives from the verb. The Middle English verb faren (also fearen, varen, vearen, fair, faire, feren ) “to travel, go, move (in space or time)” developed from Old English faran. The Old English verb has many relatives in Germanic: Old Frisian fara, Old Saxon faran, Old High German faran, German fahren, Old Norse fara, and Gothic faran.
All these verbs come from far-, a Germanic variant of the Proto-Indo-European root per-, por- “to cross, pass, pass over, bring through, convey.” The variant por- is the source of Latin portāre “to carry, transport,” as well as the nouns porta “gate, door, opening,” portus “a harbor, a port,” and porticus “covered walk, portico.”
In Greek, the variant por- forms the noun póros “passage, ford, narrowing,” as in the proper name Bosporus (Greek Bósporos ), literally, “Oxford.” The incorrect Latin spelling Bosphorus first appears in Marcus Terentius Varro, a Roman scholar and author who was a contemporary of Cicero, and it's too late to complain about it now.
Fare in the sense “price of conveyance” appeared in Middle English, related to the Old English senses “a journey” and “to travel, go.” The meanings “to eat and drink” and “food, or the provision of food” are also first recorded in Middle English.