Etymologically
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Bau

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Pronunciation

Forms

Bau m (genitive Baues or Baus, plural Bauten or Baue)[1] The plural Bauten gradually replaced older Baue and Bäue from the early 19th century.[2] It belongs to the obsolete chancery word Baute, taken in the 18th century from Low German, Middle Low German bū(we)te.[3][4] Baue remains the plural for an animal's burrow and for a mine working.[5][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German bū, inherited from Old High German bū (“dwelling”), inherited from Proto-Germanic *būą (“building, dwelling”).[6][4][1] The same noun is Old Saxon bū, Old English bū and Old Norse bú (“dwelling, household, livestock”), and in the modern languages Dutch bouw and Swedish bo (“household; burrow, nest”).[4][3] The basic sense of all these forms is “dwelling”.[3]

It belongs with the verb bauen, whose main sense in the old languages is “to dwell”: Gothic 𐌱𐌰𐌿𐌰𐌽 (bauan), Old Norse búa, Old English būan and būan.[7] Kluge takes the Germanic verb as a lengthened-grade formation from Proto-Indo-European *bʰewh₂- (“to become, be”), the root of Latin fuī (“I was”), Lithuanian bū́ti (“to be, become”), Old Church Slavonic быти (byti, “to be”), Ancient Greek φύω (phúō, “to bring forth”) and Sanskrit भवति (bhávati, “becomes, is”).[7] Kluge holds that the modern verb sense “to build” is a derivative of the noun, while the Grimms' revised dictionary treats the noun as a back-formation from the verb.[7][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German bū glosses Latin habitatio “dwelling” at the end of the 8th century.[2][8] The Muspilli (9th–10th century) speaks of the man who wins in pardisu pu, hus in himile “a dwelling in paradise, a house in heaven”, and Otfrid also uses the word, for “dwelling, place”.[2][9]

Semantic evolution

The sense “tillage of the land” is already Old High German, and in Middle High German bū meant the cultivation of a field or vineyard, a dwelling, a building and the building of a house.[3][10] From Middle High German on it was felt as the noun of the transitive verb bauen, both the act of building and the building itself.[3] In New High German the agricultural sense receded in the simple word, surviving in Ackerbau, Obstbau and Weinbau, and the mining sense lives on in Bergbau and Raubbau.[11][4]

An animal's den was a Bau early on, especially that of the fox and the badger.[12] Adelung records the punishment of labour on fortifications and the prison where convicts were held, the source of the soldiers' word for the guardroom.[13][11] The sense “structure”, as in Körperbau and Satzbau, appears with Kant and Herder.[11] Vom Bau sein “to be an expert” dates from about 1830.[11] Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus in Weimar in 1919, and English took over the name about 1923.[11][14]

Timeline

  • End of the 8th century – Old High German bū glosses habitatio.[2]
  • 9th–10th century – pu “dwelling” appears in the Muspilli.[2]
  • 14th century – Late Middle High German bawfellig “dilapidated” is recorded.[4]
  • 18th century – Baute is taken from Low German;[3][4] Baukasten “box of building blocks” appears.[3][4]
  • Early 19th century – The plural Bauten becomes established.[2][11]
  • c. 1830 – vom Bau sein is recorded.[11]
  • 1919 – Gropius founds the Bauhaus.[11]

Meanings

Noun

  1. The construction or building of something: Der Bau der Brücke dauerte drei Jahre.[5][1]
  2. The way something is put together, its structure; also a person's build: ein Mann von kräftigem Bau.[5][15]
  3. (colloquial) A building site: Ihr Vater war Maurer auf dem Bau.[5][1]
  4. A (large) building, an edifice (plural Bauten).[5][1]
  5. An animal's burrow or den (plural Baue).[5][1]
  6. (slang) One's home.[5]
  7. (military slang) The guardroom where soldiers serve detention, and the detention itself; also colloquially prison.[5][1]
  8. (mining) A gallery or working (plural Baue).[5]
  9. (Bavaria, Austria) The growing of crops.[5]

Word family

  • Ackerbau
  • Anbau
  • Bergbau
  • Raubbau
  • Neubau
  • Überbau
  • Bauwerk
  • Baumeister
  • Baustein
  • Baukasten
  • baulich
  • baufällig

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g 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. 4, 271
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2014), 5th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin / Mannheim / Zürich: Dudenverlag, p. 154
  4. ^ 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
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
  6. ^ Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 96
  7. ^ a b c Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 97
  8. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
  9. ^ Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 63
  10. ^ Lexer, Matthias (1872–1878), Mittelhochdeutsches Handwörterbuch, 3 vols., Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 1, 375
  11. ^ a b c d e f g h Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
  12. ^ Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 1, 1161
  13. ^ Adelung, Johann Christoph (1793–1801), Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart, 2nd ed., 4 vols., Leipzig: Breitkopf, p. 1, 748
  14. ^ Lehnwortportal Deutsch (2012–), Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim, lwp.ids-mannheim.de
  15. ^ Wiktionary, das freie Wörterbuch (German Wiktionary), de.wiktionary.org