# An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/Introduction

INTRODUCTION.
It cannot be denied that the study of German etymology is held in less esteem among us, and is pursued with less zeal, than that of French. This fact is not surprising; for how easily the results of Romance philology can be made evident to a man of classical training, who has in Latin the chief source, and in his own native German the most important subsidiary source of French entirely under his command! And what gratification there is in viewing through the medium of etymology, well-known words in a new light!
If German etymology could be built up to the same extent as French, from the materials furnished by the better known civilised languages, it would certainly have long ago evoked the same appreciation as is now shown for French. But the perception of historical connections is made more difficult when the earlier stages of the language are not so accessible as Latin is for the history of Romance words. A scientific knowledge of German etymology rests upon facts, whose coherence can only be explained by going beyond the limits of the chief civilised languages. It is impossible, however, for the student to go so far back, unless all the difficulties are smoothed and explained, and all the necessary details for ascertaining the history of a word are placed before him. In investigating a German word, we cannot and must not stop at Middle High German, the only earlier stage of our mother-tongue with which every educated man has some acquaintance; and even Old High German, the oldest literary period of German, is not, except in a very few cases, sufficient for the needs of the etymologist who knows how to appreciate the importance of philology in acquiring a knowledge of the history of the German language.
It is these pre-historic periods of German that furnish the indispensable foundation for etymological inquiry. Not until we have obtained an insight into the difference between the High German and Low German system of consonants can we determine the relations of a German word to its Teutonic cognates; not until we have thoroughly mastered the relations of the Gothic consonants to those of the allied Aryan languages are we able to understand the comparison of a word with its Greek and Latin cognates. To explain the earlier stages of development in German, and to throw light upon them as a chief means of ascertaining the history of a word, is the task of historical grammar. The etymologist must, if he wants to produce conviction, presuppose a general knowledge of the main crises in the history of our mother-tongue.
To the scientific acquisitions of the present century we owe the knowledge of a primary period of the history of the German language, which is authenticated by no other record than the language itself. The literary records of the old Hindus, unlocked to the learned world at the end of the last century, led to the pregnant ​discovery that the Teutons, several millenniums before our era, spoke one and the same language with the ancestors of the Hindus and Persians, the Greeks and Albanians, the Italics and Kelts, the Slavs and Armenians, a fact which clearly proved that they were descended from the same tribe. The primitive seat of those tribes, which, in conformity with the utmost limits of the settlements of their descendants, have been designated Indo-Teutons, Indo-Kelts, and also Indo-Europeans, was the South of Europe, or more probably Asia.
Scientific investigation, which has been endeavouring for more than half a century to unlock the common source of their language from the later records of the various Aryan tribes, bestows on it the highest praise for its wealth of forms, the development of which has been traced by German grammarians in our mother-tongue down to the present day. The vocabulary of this primitive speech is proved by some of its offshoots to have been exceedingly rich, and at the same time capable of extension; but its fundamental perceptions and ideas were limited. The fact that it expressed the most necessary relations and wants of life has made it the treasury from which the various Aryan languages have drawn their supply of words. Of this old hoard German too has preserved no small a portion, even down to the present time.
Compare our terms for expressing degrees of relationship with those of the allied languages, and these words, with slight divergences in sound, or with unchanged significations, will be found in the whole of the Aryan group. Of course the stock of such terms was far greater than we might suspect from the few which have remained to us. At one time we had, e.g., various designations for ‘mother's brother’ and ‘father's brother’ (comp. Oheim and Vetter with Lat. avunculus and patruus), for ‘father's sister’ and ‘mother's sister’ (comp. AS. faðu and môdrie with Lat. amita and matertera). This implied wealth of pre-historic terms for degrees of kinship can be only understood by us as existing at a time when our ancestors lived together in clans as shepherds and nomads. When with the changing years the more fully developed relations of kinship lost the old inherited terms, how seldom have alien designations attempted to oust the native words, and how seldom with success! Compare Onkel and Tante with Vater and Mutter, Bruder and Schwester, Oheim and Muhme, Neffe and Nichte, Vetter and Base, Schwäher and Schwieger, Schnur and Schwager.
The terms for expressing kinship, whose unimpaired vigour we see in German, are, in combination with the numerals up to a hundred, an infallible indication of the Aryan origin of a language. Thus German testifies also by its old inherited numerals its close relation to the allied languages. Moreover, the designations of parts of the body are specially characteristic of all Aryan tongues. If German in its later development has lost many of them (comp., e.g., OHG. gëbal, ‘skull,’ equiv. to Gr. κεφαλή, under Giebel), yet it preserves in most cases the old inherited words; Hirn, Ohr, Braue, Nase, Zahn, Hals, Bug, Achsel, Arm, Elle, Nagel, Knie, Fuß, Fell recur sometimes in one, sometimes in several of the allied languages. The knowledge too of natural history was displayed in the primitive speech by some essential words. Of the mammals, apart from the domesticated animals (see Vieh, Kuh, Ochse, Hund, Fohlen, Roß and Schaf), only a few destructive quadrupeds, such as Wolf and Maus, Biber and Hase (see also Bär), have been transmitted to German from that primitive linguistic period. The names for birds and trees are, however, but rarely common to several languages of the Aryan group (see Aar, Kranich, Birke, Föhre, Fichte, and ​Bude). Of inanimate nature also the primitive people had only a limited perception; few names for the periods of the day and the year were coined, and, as might have been expected, the circle of their religious ideas was narrow. Only the German words Nacht, Monat, and Sommer have corresponding terms in several allied tongues; the two old Aryan gods of light, Diêus and Ausôs, have left their final traces in Alemannic Ziestag and in German Ostern.
There is a further rich supply of isolated words in our mother-tongue inherited from the primitive stock. They relate chiefly to the most simple and natural expressions, needs, and activities of life; stehen, geben, essen, decken, schwitzen, nackt, jung, neu, voll, süß, mitten, dürr, &c., are derived from the primitive speech. In moral conceptions our mother-tongue inherited the stems of Freund and Feind, lieben and hassen, hadern and trügen from the old vocabulary.
With the division of the primitive Aryan people into tribes, which may have been caused by religious and political dissensions, or perhaps only by the constant increase in number, and with the migration of these tribes from their primitive home, the Teutonic language may be said to begin. The old materials partly sufficed for the constant growth of perceptions and ideas. Old words received a new shade of meaning; the root (Sans. mŗ) for ‘to die’ acquired the signification of ‘murder’; ‘the dear, the cherished one‘ became 'the freeman’; ‘to follow’ came to mean ‘to see’ (sehen); ‘to split’ was extended into ‘to bite’ (beißen), and 'to persist,’ ‘to stride,’ were developed into ‘to live’ (leben) and ‘to mount’ (steigen). Derivatives from existing stems assumed characteristic significations; in this way Gott, König, Kind, schön, and Woge originated. On the other hand, we note the loss of old roots, which in other Aryan groups developed numerous cognates; the roots pô, ‘to drink,’ and dô, ‘to give,’ which we recognise in Lat. potare and Gr. πέπωκα, and in Lat. dare and Gr. δίδωμι, have completely disappeared in Teutonic. Of other primitive roots we find in Teutonic only a few slight relics nearly disappearing, some of which will in course of time vanish altogether. The root ag, ‘to drive’ (in Lat. ago, see Ader), the root an, ‘to breathe’ (in Lat. animus and Gr. ανεμος), the root gĭw, ‘to live’ (in Lat. vivere, see queck), have never had in Teutonic, during the period of its independent development, such a wide evolution as in Latin and Greek. In the case of such words, when the idea is a living one, the term that supplants them already exists before they die out; in fact, it is the cause of their disappearance. Occasionally, however, we find in the Teutonic group characteristic word stems, which we look for in vain in the sphere of the allied languages, although they must once have existed there too in a living form. Such primitive stems as Teutonic alone has preserved may be at the base of trinken, geben, fürchten, fechten, fliehen, halten, &c. Other roots peculiar to the Teutonic languages may owe their existence to onomatopoetic creation during the independent development of Teutonic; such are perhaps klingen and niesen.
Only such a pliancy of the primitive speech could keep pace with the higher intellectual development which we must assume for the progress of the Teutonic group after the first division of dialects. The capacity of our race for development is sufficient, even without the assumption of foreign influences, to account for the refinement and development of the conditions of life among the Teutons during the second period of the primitive history of our language. The growing susceptibility to the external world resulted in the extension of the sphere of the gods, the contact with foreign nations led to a refinement of social life, and with both these the ​conception of propriety grew up. What an abundance of new ideas and words, which were foreign to the primitive speech, had now to be evolved! In fact, we find among the Aryans but a slight agreement in the designations of ethical ideas; gut and übel, mild and arg, hold and treu, are specifically Teutonic; Adel, Ehe, and schwören have no exact correspondences in the remaining Teutonic languages. Gott, Himmel, Hölle, Erde, as well as Wodan (see Wut), Freia (see frei), and Donar (see Donner), owe their existence to the special religious development of the Teutons, while we find the belief in elfish beings (see Elf) even in the Vedas.
It is true that this increase does not altogether suffice to characterise the development of the languages of the Teutonic group. If we assign the year 2000 B.C. as the latest date for the Aryan division of dialects, the second period of the history of the German language would end with the beginning of our era. This interval of two thousand years, at the end of which we assume the development of the consonant and vowel forms peculiar to Teutonic, as well as the settlement of the Teutons in Germany, has no well-defined divisions with prominent characteristics; but the later evidence of the language indicates in this pre-historic period so many points of contact with civilised nations as would in historic times probably be regarded as forming a new epoch. The Teutonic tribe, with the western group of nations of the Aryan stock, had left its eastern home as a pasturing people. Evidence in the language itself subsequently shows us these people with their flocks on the march. The term tageweide, current in Middle High German, could exist as a measure of length only among a race of shepherds in the act of migrating; only nomads could count their stages by periods of rest (Rasten). That the great stream of Aryan tribes poured through the South Russian lowlands (the Italics and Kelts had shown them the way) is antecedently probable, and this theory is finely illustrated by the history of the word Hanf. Here we see the Teutons in contact with a non-Aryan people in the south of Russia; and so, too, the foreign aspect of the Teutonic word Silber (comp. Erbse also) testifies to the pre-historic contact of our ancestors with people of a different race, whose origin can unfortunately no longer be determined. We suspect that its influence on the Teutons and their language was manifested in a greater number of loan-words than can now be discovered.
On the other hand, the emigrant Aryans, whom we find at a later period in our part of the world, and whose languages were differentiated only gradually from one another and from the primitive speech, were led by constant intercourse to exchange a large number of terms expressive of the acquisitions of civilisation, which the individual tribes would perhaps have acquired only after a longer independent development. Numerous words are peculiar to the European Aryans, which we seek for in vain among the Indians and Persians. They relate chiefly to agriculture and technical products, the development of which did certainly not take place at the same time among all the European peoples belonging to the Teutonic stock. Occasionally the language itself bears witness that correspondences in the languages spoken by the Western Aryans are due only to the adoption of words by one people from another (see nähen). Thus the stems of old words such as säen, mahlen, mähen, and melken, whose Aryan character is undoubted, will not necessarily be regarded as genuine Teutonic, since they may have been borrowed from a kindred people.
The evidence of language, which alone gives us a knowledge of the primitive contact of the Teutons with foreign and kindred people, is unfortunately not full ​enough, and not always transparent enough, to furnish sufficient material for a clear view of these pre-historic events. It is generally acknowledged that the intercourse with the neighbouring Slavonic people took place in the second period of the history of the German language. For the influence of the Kelts upon the Teutons, Amt and Reich afford valuable testimony, which at the same time shows what decisive results can at times be obtained from language itself. We have in the term welsch the last offshoot of the Teutonic word Walh (borrowed from the Keltic tribal name Volcae), by which the Kelts were formerly designated by the Teutons.
The name by which the Teutons called themselves is unfortunately lost to us. Our learned men have therefore agreed to use the Keltic term which was customary among old historians, and which, according to the testimony of the Venerable Bede, was applied in England to the immigrant Anglo-Saxons by the Britons even in the 8th century. The national character of the Teutons and the type of their language were for a very long period after the division into tribes the same as before. In the last century before our era, when numerous Teutonic tribes became known to the ancient world, we have not the least evidence to show that the language had branched off into dialects. The same may be said of the time of Tacitus; but his account of the genealogy of the Teutonic tribes seems to have some connection with divisions into dialects, recorded at a later period.
The linguistic division of the Teutons into an Eastern group, comprising Goths and Scandinavians, and into a Western, including the English, Frisians, Saxons, Franks, Bavarians, Swabians, and Alemannians, is generally regarded as undoubted. The evidence of language goes, however, to prove that a close connection exists only among the West Teutonic tribes; and unless Tacitus' ethnogony includes all the Teutons, his group of tribes, comprising the Ingaevones, the Erminones, and the Istaevones, are identical in fact with the Western division. The permutation of consonants and the development of the vowel system, which we assume to have been effected before the beginning of our era, were the chief characteristics of all the languages of the second period; but the most important factor in the development of West Teutonic was the uniform attrition of the old final syllables. With the operation of this law in West Teutonic begins the decay of the old inherited forms, most of which were lost in the third period. The German language is now entering upon a stage of development which had been reached by English some centuries ago.
But in spite of this loss of forms, the language retains its old pliancy in undiminished force; after independent words, even in the second period, had been transformed into suffixes and prefixes, the language still possessed new elements which were ready to replace what had been lost. Moreover, the same forces operate in the later history of the vocabulary as in the primitive Teutonic period.
Thus West Teutonic has preserved the stems of old words, which in Gothic and Scandinavian have either died out or have fallen more or less into the background; gehen, stehen, thun, bin, fechten, sterben, as well as Busen, Obst, Feuer, groß, &c., are the essential characteristics of a West Teutonic language. Other words, such as Nachbar, elend, gesund, Messer, Heirat, and Nachtigall, owe their existence to later composition. But, above all, the absence of numerous old words, preserved by Gothic or Scandinavian, is a main feature of the West Teutonic group. But this is not the place to adduce every loss and every compensation which has diminished and re-shaped the old elements in the sphere of languages most closely allied to German.
​The pre-Old High German period — the third period of our mother-tongue, which is not attested by literary records — has, however, acquired its distinctive features by new contact with the languages of civilised nations, which added new elements to the existing material: above all, the contact with the Romans resulted in an exchange of productions and contrivances. However fond we may be of overrating the influence of Latin on the West Teutonic languages, yet it cannot be denied that it materially widened the most various spheres of ideas.
Words which point to active commercial intercourse, such as Münze and Pfund, Straße and Meile, Kiste and Sack, Esel and Pfau, were made known in the pre-High German period, probably even in the first century A.D., to our forefathers both mediately and immediately by the Romans. Contemporaneously with these the Latin nomenclature of the culture of the vine was naturalised in Germany in the words Wein, Most, Lauer, Kelter, and Trichter. Not much later a rich terminology, together with the Roman style of building, was introduced; Mauer, Keller, Söller, Speicher, Kammer, Weiher, Ziegel, Pfeiler, Pfosten, Pfahl, and numerous other cognate ideas, evidently bear the stamp of a Latin origin. The adoption of the Southern method of building in stone, however, brought about a transformation of the entire domestic life. When a migratory life is exchanged for a permanent settlement, the example of a highly civilised people cannot fail to furnish abundant material for imitation. We are not surprised, therefore, to find in the language itself the influence of even Roman cookery and of Roman horticulture before the Old High German period; Koch, Küche, Schüssel, Kessel, Becken, Tisch, Essig, Senf, Pfeffer, Kohl, Pflanze, Rettig, Kürbis, Kümmel, Kirsche, Pfirsich, Pflaume, Quitte, Feige, &c., testify how ready the German of that period was to extend his knowledge and enrich his language when he exchanged the simple customs of his ancestors for a more luxuriant mode of life.
It would, of course, be a too hasty assumption to explain such Southern alien terms (a few Keltic words such as carrus, carruca, and paraveredus, see Karren, Karch, and Pferd, were introduced through a Roman medium) from the importation of products and technical accomplishments which were unknown to our ancestors till about the beginning of our era. We have indubitable reasons, supported by the extent of the Teutonic exports to Rome, and not merely linguistic reasons. We know from Pliny's Natural History that the Teutons furnished effeminate, imperial Rome the material for pillows by the importation of geese; eoque processere deliciae ut sine hoc instrumento durare jam ne virorum quidem cervices possint. This suggests to the historian of languages the connection of the Latin origin of Flaum, Kissen, and Pfühl with Pliny's account; our ancestors adopted the Latin designation for the articles which the Romans procured from Germania, Thus our Pfühl with its cognates attests the share Germania had in the decline of Rome.
With Greece the Western Teutons have had in historical times — the word Arzt does not prove much — no immediate contact producing any influence on the German language. It was really the Romans who made known to the new conquerors of the world the name of that nation which at a subsequent period was destined to affect our development so powerfully. But the settlement of the Goths in the Balkan peninsula (their latest descendants were the Crimean Goths, who died out about the beginning of the last century) had such an influence on the Western Teutons that they have left traces even in our mother-tongue; the first knowledge of Christianity spread from them among the other Teutons. Our oldest supply of loan-words bearing on the Christian religion belongs to Greek terminology, which never existed in the ​Roman Church; the words Kirche and Pfaffe, Samstag and Pfinztag, we undoubtedly owe to Greek influence, through the medium of the Arian Goths; and probably the same may be said of Engel and Teufel, Bischof and Pfingsten. The connection between the German tribes and the Goths, which we think can be recognised in other words expressive of religious ideas, such as Heide and taufen, lasted till the 7th century; the Alemannians were until the year 635 A.D. under the dominion of the Goths. Orthodox Christianity of the Middle Ages, which supplanted Arianism, was no longer in a position to reject entirely the naturalised terminology, and thus our mother-tongue has preserved down to the present day some expressions of Gothic-Arian Christianity.
All the words that Romish missionaries introduced into German also evidently bear the stamp of a later linguistic period. Not until the development of the peculiar system of sounds in High German — a new permutation of consonants divided from this point High German from Low German— does the influence of Romish Christianity begin to express itself in the language. From the end of the 8th century our mother-tongue remained for more than two hundred years in the service of religious literature. It is the period in our history in which literary records appear, and during that time High German was greatly influenced by Romish Christianity. A large number of Latin words was naturalised among us; for ecclesiastical offices and dignities, for ecclesiastical rites and appurtenances, we adapted the current terms consecrated by the official language of the Church, such as Priester, Probst, Abt, Mönch, Nonne, Sigrist, Küster, Meßner, Messe, Feier, segnen, predigen, kasteien, verdammen, Kreuz, Kelch, Orgel, Altar, &c. The unceasing pliancy of our language is attested by the fact that some German words were constructed on the model of the Latin, such as Beichte, from confessio, Gevatter, from compater, Gewissen, from conscientia. The Church brought learning with a new nomenclature in its train; contemporaneously with the ecclesiastical Latin words, Schule, schreiben, Tinte, Brief, received among us the rights of citizenship.
While the Old German vocabulary was enriched by such materials, there existed a store of words which is dying out in the literary language, and is prolonging to some extent its semi-conscious life in the old popular songs. At the same time the terminology of war receives a new impress; old words for ' combat,' such as gund, hilti, badu, hadu, disappear as independent words, and leave behind indistinct traces only in proper names, such as Günther and Hedwig. Words such as marh (see Mähre), and Ger, Rede, and Weigand have been brought down as archaic terms to the Middle High German period.
With the rise of chivalry the old German terms applied to war must, as may be imagined, have undergone transformation; as it was French in its essential character, it also introduced French loan-words among us. French influence, which first made itself felt in Germany about the year 1000 A.D. (the word fein is, perhaps, the earliest loan-word of genuine French origin), has never ceased to operate on our language. But it reached its zenith with the introduction of chivalry, as it did once again at the time of the Thirty Years' War. It is therefore not to be wondered at that words relating to war and the court, such as Lanze, Soldat, Palast, Kastell, Turnier, Abenteuer, have been borrowed from the French vocabulary in exchange, as it were, for the stock of Teutonic words connected with war which passed some centuries earlier into French (comp. French auberge, gonfalon, maréchal, héraut under Herberge, Fahne, Marschall, and Herold). Moreover, courtly and fashionable words, such as kosten, liefern, prüfen, and preisen have also passed into Germany. ​When the linguistic influence of the West had reached its culminating point, Slavonic began to make itself felt on the German Eastern marches. As it was due to neighbourly intercourse among the border tribes, it was at first insignificant and harmless. But several words which came to light in this way, such as Dolmetsch, Grenze, Kummet, Peitsche, Petschaft, and Schöps, gradually won for themselves from the 13th century a place in the language of our literature.
These are in their main features the facts of those periods of the history of the German language whose material has furnished the essential contents of the present work. In those periods lie the beginnings of most of the words whose origin demands a stricter etymological investigation.