August

Forms

August m (genitive August or Augusts or Augustes, plural Auguste)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin Augustus (“August”), the month named by the Romans in honour of the emperor Octavian, who bore the title Augustus, “the exalted”.^[2][3][4] The title is a derivative of an s-stem in the family of augeō (“to increase”).^[2][5] The new name replaced the older Latin one meaning “the sixth (month)”.^[2]

German borrowed the name twice.^[6] Old High German ougusto (also agusto) was taken over early, through legal texts, and developed regularly into Middle High German ougest and the shorter forms Augst and Aust, which survive in dialects.^[2][6][7] The chancery language of the 16th century introduced the Latin form anew, and it lost its Latin endings only in the 18th century.^[6][2][3] The native name Old High German aranmānōd (“harvest month”), recommended under Charlemagne, could not establish itself, nor could the purist name Zesen proposed in 1648.^[3][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German ougusto and agusto are found in the Abrogans glossary at the end of the 8th century, where manot augusto renders the Hebrew month name Elul.^[8][9][7] The spelling with a- may reflect the Vulgar Latin pronunciation Agustus.^[7]

Semantic evolution

Middle High German ougest also meant “harvest time”, and this sense lives on in dialect forms such as Swiss and Alsatian Augst.^[10][7][3] Hartmann's Iwein (about 1200) has ouwest, and a charter of 1294 is dated an dem ersten tage ougesten.^[8] In the 16th and 17th centuries Latin inflection was usual in dates, as in im Augusto “in August” or the genitive Augusti after the day.^[3][8] Adelung in 1774 was among the first to use it without the Latin ending.^[6]

Timeline

• Late 8th century – Old High German agusto in the Abrogans glossary.^[8]
• c. 1200 – Ouwest in Hartmann's Iwein.^[8]
• 1263 – Ougest appears in charters.^[10]
• 16th century – The chancery language reintroduces Augustus.^[6][11]
• 1648 – Zesen proposes the purist Erndmahnd.^[3]
• 1774 – Adelung uses August without the Latin ending.^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. August, the eighth month of the year; abbreviated Aug.^[12][1]

Related words

• Auktion

Usage notes

The male given name August, from the same Latin name, is a separate word.^[13][1] From it comes dummer August, a type of clown in the circus, which Paul dates to 1864 in an English circus;^[6][8] French borrowed it as auguste (1889) and English as Auguste (1910).^[14]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 74
3. ^ a b c d e f Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
4. ^ Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2014), 5th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin / Mannheim / Zürich: Dudenverlag, p. 139
5. ^ Wahrig-Burfeind, Renate, ed., Wahrig Herkunftswörterbuch, Gütersloh / München: Wissen Media Verlag; online edition at wissen.de
6. ^ 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
7. ^ a b c d e Lloyd, Albert L.; Springer, Otto; Lühr, Rosemarie, et al. (1988–), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; online ewa.saw-leipzig.de, p. 6, 1267
8. ^ a b c d e f 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. 3, 911
9. ^ Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch (1952–), founded by Elisabeth Karg-Gasterstädt and Theodor Frings, Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag / De Gruyter; online awb.saw-leipzig.de, p. 7, 182
10. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
11. ^ Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2007), 4th ed., Duden vol. 7, Mannheim: Dudenverlag
12. ^ Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
13. ^ Adelung, Johann Christoph (1793–1801), Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart, 2nd ed., 4 vols., Leipzig: Breitkopf
14. ^ Lehnwortportal Deutsch (2012–), Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim, lwp.ids-mannheim.de