Etymologically
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überhaupt

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Pronunciation

  • /ˌyːbɐˈhaʊ̯pt/[1]

Forms

überhaupt[1] Luther and other writers of the 16th and 17th centuries used umlauted forms such as uberheupt; dialects have überhaupts with an adverbial ⟨s⟩.[2][3]

Etymology

It is a fusion from German über + Haupt, from the late medieval phrase Middle High German über houbet (“over the head(s)”), with the accusative of the noun.[4][5][3] It began as a term of the cattle trade: to buy or sell in this way was to deal in a lump sum, without counting the single animals, the “heads”.[4][6][5] It was then generalised to legal and business dealings where a lump sum stood against an itemised account.[4]

The present sense “in general” was at first expressed by überall, which überhaupt displaced in this use in the 18th century.[4][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Kluge dates the word to the 14th century and Pfeifer to the 15th.[4][5] In Middle High German the phrase also had a local sense, as in über houbet vehten “to fight overhead”, that is, against the current.[2]

Semantic evolution

Until the 18th century überhaupt kaufen meant to buy goods as a whole lot, as Stieler records in 1691, and the word meant “altogether, in total”: Goethe writes in a letter of 1815 Wir zahlen dafür überhaupt 48 Thlr. (“we pay 48 thalers for it altogether”).[3][5] Placed after a noun it came to mean “as such, in general”, as in Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1787).[3]

In the 18th century it became general and was used to strengthen negations, überhaupt nicht “not at all”;[5][2] as a particle in questions (“actually, at all”) Pfeifer dates it to the end of the 17th century.[5] The philosophical sense passed into English in 1875, in phrases such as Bewusstsein überhaupt, and the word was borrowed into Dutch in the early 20th century.[7][1]

Timeline

  • 14th century – First record, according to Kluge.[4]
  • 15th century – First record, according to Pfeifer.[5]
  • 1691 – Stieler records überhaupt kaufen “to buy in bulk”.[3]
  • End of the 17th century – Used as a particle in questions.[5]
  • 1787 – Kant uses it after a noun, “as such”.[3]
  • 18th century – überhaupt nicht “not at all”; the word displaces überall in the sense “in general”.[5][4]
  • 1875 – Borrowed into English in philosophical use.[7]

Meanings

Adverb

  1. In general, on the whole: Er ist überhaupt selten pünktlich.[8][1]
  2. With a negation: at all: Das habe ich überhaupt nicht gewusst.[8][1]
  3. With und: besides, apart from that.[8]
  4. Especially: Man sollte, überhaupt im Winter, warme Schuhe tragen.[8]

Particle

  1. In questions: actually, at all: Weißt du überhaupt, wie spät es ist?[8][1]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 23, 302
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 938
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
  6. ^ Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag, p. 883
  7. ^ a b Lehnwortportal Deutsch (2012–), Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim, lwp.ids-mannheim.de
  8. ^ a b c d e Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag