Etymologically
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Alter

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Pronunciation

  • /ˈaltər/, [ˈʔaltɐ], [ˈʔaltər][1]

Forms

Alter n (genitive Alters, plural Alter)[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German alter, inherited from Old High German altar, inherited from Proto-Germanic *aldrą (“life, lifetime, age”).[2][1][3] The same word is Old Saxon aldar, Old English ealdor, Old Frisian alder and Old Norse aldr, continued in Swedish ålder and Icelandic aldur;[2][4][3] Gothic has it only in the adjective Gothic 𐍆𐍂𐌰𐌼𐌰𐌻𐌳𐍂𐍃 (framaldrs, “aged”).[2][4][3] Old High German also has a form with grammatical change, aldar, in phrases meaning “ever” and “never”.[3]

It is probably a noun with the instrumental suffix Proto-Indo-European *-trom from the root of the verb Proto-Germanic *alaną (“to grow, nourish”), parallel to the adjective alt.[2][4][5] Pfeifer and the EWA reconstruct Proto-Indo-European *al-tro- from the root Proto-Indo-European *h₂el- (“to grow, nourish”).[5][3] Outside Germanic, Kluge and Kroonen compare Old Irish altram (“nurture, fosterage”) and comaltar (“joint fosterage”).[2][4] The meaning would then have gone from growing up, the stages of youth, to the stages of life in general, and only later to old age as opposed to youth.[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German altar is recorded from the end of the 8th century in the glosses, and then in the Benedictine Rule, the Tatian, Otfrid and Notker, meaning “age, lifetime, age of the world, eternity”.[6][7][3] Phrases such as io in altere meant “ever” and zi altere “for ever”.[7]

Semantic evolution

In Middle High German alter meant mankind or the world, an age of the world, olden times, a stage of life, and old age.[8][9] Early New High German used it for the stages into which a human life was divided (usually four, or seven after Hippocrates), for old age, for long wear of an object, and for a past epoch.[10][11] The sense “age of the world, era” has become rare on its own and lives on in compounds such as Zeitalter, Mittelalter and Weltalter and in von alters her “from time immemorial”.[12][13][5] Today the word mostly means the number of years someone has lived and old age as the opposite of youth.[13][2]

Timeline

  • End of the 8th century – Old High German altar appears in glosses.[6][5]
  • c. 830 – Old Saxon aldar appears in the Heliand.[3]
  • 15th century – The verb altern “to grow old” appears.[5]
  • c. 1500 – Altertum “antiquity, ancient times” is recorded.[5]
  • End of the 18th century – altertümlich “old-fashioned, archaic” appears.[5]

Meanings

Noun

  1. Old age; the last stage of life: Im Alter zog sie zu ihrer Tochter. Alter schützt vor Torheit nicht.[14][1]
  2. Long existence of a thing: Das Papier ist vom Alter vergilbt.[14]
  3. Age, the number of years someone or something has lived or existed; a stage of life: Im Alter von zehn Jahren lernte er schwimmen. Sie ist in meinem Alter.[14][1]
  4. (chiefly in compounds) An epoch, an age of history: Mittelalter, Zeitalter.[1][5]

Word family

  • Altertum
  • altern
  • altertümlich
  • Zeitalter
  • Mittelalter

Usage notes

Related to it is the nominalised adjective der Alte (indefinite ein Alter): an old man, colloquially a father, husband or boss, and in youth slang the form of address Alter! “dude, mate”.[1][15] In medieval chess der Alte was the bishop, a name that arose from Arabic al-fīl “the elephant” by association with alt.[16]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 36
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Lloyd, Albert L.; Springer, Otto; Lühr, Rosemarie, et al. (1988–), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; online ewa.saw-leipzig.de, p. 1, 173
  4. ^ a b c d Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
  6. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
  7. ^ a b Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 33
  8. ^ Lexer, Matthias (1872–1878), Mittelhochdeutsches Handwörterbuch, 3 vols., Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 1, 44
  9. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
  10. ^ Anderson, Robert R.; Goebel, Ulrich; Reichmann, Oskar, eds. (1989–), Frühneuhochdeutsches Wörterbuch, Berlin / New York: De Gruyter; FWB-online, fwb-online.de
  11. ^ Adelung, Johann Christoph (1793–1801), Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart, 2nd ed., 4 vols., Leipzig: Breitkopf, p. 1, 238
  12. ^ Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 1, 268
  13. ^ a b Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2014), 5th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin / Mannheim / Zürich: Dudenverlag, p. 114
  14. ^ a b c Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
  15. ^ Wiktionary, das freie Wörterbuch (German Wiktionary), de.wiktionary.org
  16. ^ Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm, Neubearbeitung (1965–2018), ed. Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften and Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, 9 vols. (A–F), Leipzig / Stuttgart: Hirzel, p. 2, 585