The podictionary word for today is craft:  Most times I haul groceries back from the store they are in plastic bags.  But sometimes I get them in those brown paper bags.  In the paper trade, that kind of paper is known as kraft paper; kraft with a K.  This is from Swedish and means “strong.”  And this is a clue to the roots of our English word craft with a C.  Our English word is of Germanic stock, just like the Swedish word, so it is Old English. 

In modern English the word has a number of meanings including as a verb the care you take in building something and as a noun either a vehicle or even a sort of profession.  People who are crafty are either sneaky or—on the flip side: arty and creative—like the crafty chica.  Back in the dark of Old English craft had yet another meaning; similar the Swedish Kraft the Old English craft originally meant “strength” and “power”; “might” and “force.”  But even as we see the first citations appearing in English, already that bicep flexing sense of craft is joined by a more intellectual sense of strength, and with it mental skill. 

By 1000 years ago already a piece of art might be called a craft.  But were strength can be used to the good, it can be used to the bad as well and even before then craft was being used to describe “cunning” and “deceit” as well.  It wasn’t until around 400 years ago that vehicles began to be called crafts, and of course the first vehicles were boats.  Now we have aircraft and spacecraft, but at first it seems that the application of the word craft was to the skill of the boatmen. 

The name of the skill, seems to have rubbed off on the tools they used with those skills.  So much so that not only were boats called craft, but so were nets and boat hooks and ropes for a while.  The American Heritage Dictionary says that craft has been used as a verb since Old English, but I can only find Middle English citations in the OED.  According to American Heritage the meaning of the verb craft was most strongly associated with pursuits of literature.  That means you can craft a novel but not a bylaw.  Their usage panel, who judges the propriety of English words felt as follows:
Seventy-three percent of the Usage Panel accepted the phrase beautifully crafted prose. But, only 35 percent accepted planners crafted their proposal.

Fittingly Geoffrey Chaucer said
That lyf so short, / the craft so long to lerne