Etymologically
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Boden

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Pronunciation

  • /ˈboːdn̩/[1]

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

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