In various European languages, most especially in the Romance ones, their
own respective cognates for our Latin-derived word import can be used as
a verb in much the way as the verb concern is used in current English:
- Não me importa. (Portuguese)
- No me importa. (Spanish)
- No m’importa. (Catalan)
- Cela ne m’importe pas. (French)
Those all translate literally “It is not important to me”, the
kind of thing you would say to mean “It does not concern me” or
“It does not matter to me”.
Has English ever had a similar usage for the same sense of the same verb;
that is, has it ever been common in English to say this?
- It does not import me.
Please Note
I am asking specifically about the use of import as a transitive verb and used a person of interest or personal pronoun used in the same manner and sense as we now use concern, as in:
- It imports me.
The noun form seen in “It is of no import to me” is of no import to me.
Best Answer
Yes. The Oxford English Dictionary has this definition (and some other similar ones) for ɪᴍᴘᴏʀᴛ v. 6a in their section II of that verb:
For example, in Tyrannick Love (1670):
And in the negative in Elizabeth Evanshaw: The Sequel of "Truth": a Novel (1827):
Note that this verb sense of the word is obsolete, so you shouldn’t use it.