Boden

Forms

Boden m (genitive Bodens, plural Böden)^[1] The old plural was Boden, without umlaut; the umlauted Böden appears from the end of the 13th century, and both forms stood side by side in the 15th and 16th centuries.^[2] The plural without umlaut survived until the end of the 18th century, and Goethe still wrote boden.^[2][3] Until the 17th century the singular was usually bodem, with the older final /m/.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German bodem, inherited from Old High German bodam, inherited from Proto-Germanic *butmaz (“bottom”).^[5][4][1] The same word is Old Saxon bodom, Old English botm, Old Frisian boden and Old Norse botn, as are Dutch bodem and English bottom.^[5][4][6] Outside Germanic, it is related to Sanskrit बुध्न (budhná, “bottom, ground, root”), Ancient Greek πυθμήν (puthmḗn, “bottom of a vessel or of the sea”) and Latin fundus (“bottom”), which go back to Proto-Indo-European *bʰudʰmḗn (“bottom”).^[5][4][7][1]

The Germanic forms disagree in their dental: the High German word points to a form with /þ/, while Norse and English point to one with /t/, and Pfeifer calls the alternation unexplained.^[5][4][8] Kluge puts it down to different assimilations to the following nasal.^[5] Kroonen explains it from an old paradigm in which the /m/ was dissimilated already in the genitive, giving the Sanskrit and Latin forms with /n/, and a Germanic doublet with /tt/ that mixed with the nominative to make several stem variants.^[6] The forms also vary between an /m/ and an /n/ suffix.^[4][2] The further origin of the root is unclear.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German bodam is first found in glosses: podum translates Latin carina “keel of a ship” in a gloss of about 820/830, and Köbler dates the oldest gloss record to about 790.^[2][9] In Old High German it meant “bottom, ground”, also the hull, keel or deck of a ship, and Notker uses it.^[8]

Semantic evolution

The senses “ground, soil” and “floor” are recorded from the 11th and 12th centuries.^[2] Middle High German bodem meant the ground, a piece of land, the floor, the bottom of a barrel or vessel, a granary, the hull of a ship and even a raft.^[10][11]

The sense “storey”, and then especially “attic”, grew out of the raised floor of boards and is found only in German;^[5][4][7] Pfeifer dates the attic sense to the 16th century.^[5][4][7] It survives in Dachboden and Heuboden, and in southern German Boden also meant a whole storey.^[12][7] Many fixed phrases use the word figuratively, such as auf fruchtbaren Boden fallen “to be well received”, from the parable of the sower, and Boden gewinnen or verlieren.^[12][13] Luther already has das schlägt dem Fass den Boden aus “that is the last straw”.^[12] The Low German form of the same word gave Bodden, a shallow coastal lagoon.^[7][1]

Timeline

• c. 790 – First record of Old High German bodam in glosses.^[9]
• c. 820/830 – Podum glosses Latin carina “keel”.^[2]
• 11th–12th century – The senses “ground” and “floor” appear.^[2]
• Late 13th century – First umlauted plural forms.^[2]
• 16th century – Boden names the attic, a sense found only in German.^[4]
• 17th century – The spelling bodem gives way to boden.^[4]
• 17th century – bodenständig is first recorded, meaning “standing on the ground”.^[4][7]

Meanings

Noun

1. Soil, earth, land as it is farmed or built on.^[13][1]
2. The ground, or the floor of a room.^[13][1]
3. The bottom of a container, a body of water or a ship.^[13][1]
4. An attic or loft, the space under the roof.^[13][1]
5. A territory or area, as in auf deutschem Boden.^[13][14]
6. A basis or foundation, as in auf dem Boden der Tatsachen.^[13][14]

Word family

• bodenlos
• bodenständig
• Dachboden
• Fußboden
• Erdboden
• Heuboden
• Meeresboden
• Nährboden
• Bodensatz

Related words

• Bodden
• Fundus
• English bottom

Usage notes

Am Boden zerstört sein “to be completely exhausted or crushed” comes from wartime reporting, where it first described aircraft destroyed by bombs before they could take off.^[15] The name of the Bodensee (Lake Constance) is not from this word but from the royal palace of Bodman on its shore.^[5][16]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. 5, 536
3. ^ Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 2, 210
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k 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 Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 137
6. ^ a b Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
7. ^ a b c d e f Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag
8. ^ a b Lloyd, Albert L.; Springer, Otto; Lühr, Rosemarie, et al. (1988–), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; online ewa.saw-leipzig.de, p. 2, 222
9. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
10. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
11. ^ Lexer, Matthias (1872–1878), Mittelhochdeutsches Handwörterbuch, 3 vols., Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 1, 321
12. ^ a b c Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
13. ^ a b c d e f g Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
14. ^ a b Wiktionary, das freie Wörterbuch (German Wiktionary), de.wiktionary.org
15. ^ Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2007), 4th ed., Duden vol. 7, Mannheim: Dudenverlag
16. ^ Wahrig-Burfeind, Renate, ed., Wahrig Herkunftswörterbuch, Gütersloh / München: Wissen Media Verlag; online edition at wissen.de