Chef

Forms

Chef m (genitive Chefs, plural Chefs, feminine Chefin or Cheffin)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French chef (“head, chief, leader”), borrowed at the beginning of the 17th century.^[2][3][4] The French word goes back through Old French chief and Vulgar Latin *capus to Latin caput (“head; leading person”).^[3][4][5] Duden gives the intermediate form as Gallo-Romance *capum.^[6]

The same French word was taken as Dutch chef and Swedish chef, and English has it twice, in the older borrowing English chief and in the later chef.^[2] From the Latin noun also come, through Italian, French or Latin itself, Kapitän, Kapital, Kapitel and Kadett, while the native Germanic relative is Haupt.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is from 1616, in Wallhausen's military manual, where Cheff is glossed “the head”.^[7][4][8] The word first belonged to the army, meaning the commander of a regiment or of a whole force.^[4][7][3]

Semantic evolution

In the 17th and 18th centuries Chef was often used in French phrases such as General en chef “commander-in-chief”, and it remained in military titles like Chef des Generalstabes.^[4] From the early 18th century it spread to law, commerce and administration, meaning the head of an office, a firm or a board, and it replaced the older word Prinzipal.^[4][8][7] Pfeifer dates this general sense to the first half of the 18th century; the Grimms' revised dictionary has it from 1713, of a court that had been “without a chief” for ten years.^[3][7]

Knigge mocked “the chief of a department” who did not want to work, or could not.^[8] Today the simple word is rather colloquial, while compounds such as Chefredakteur (1879) and Chefarzt (1912) are standard.^[8] In colloquial speech Chef is also a casual way of addressing a stranger.^[9][10] The French compound Chef-d'œuvre “masterpiece” was used from 1719, and now survives only in cookery.^[8]

Timeline

• 1616 – First record, Cheff, in a military manual.^[7][4]
• 1633 – The plural chefs is recorded.^[4]
• 1713 – Chef is used of the head of a court of law.^[7]
• 1719 – Chef-d'œuvre “masterpiece” appears in German.^[8]
• 1879 – Chefredakteur “editor-in-chief” is recorded.^[8]
• 1912 – Chefarzt “senior consultant” is recorded.^[8]

Meanings

Noun

1. The head of an organization, firm or department; a boss, a superior: Die neue Chefin der Bibliothek stellt sich morgen vor.^[9][1][10]
2. A leader of a group, especially of a gang: der Chef einer Schmugglerbande.^[9][10]
3. (slang) A casual form of address to a man one does not know: Hallo, Chef, ist hier noch frei?^[9][10]

Word family

• Chefin
• Chefarzt
• Chefredakteur
• Küchenchef

Related words

• Haupt
• Kapitän
• Kapital
• Kapitel
• English chief

Usage notes

Chef im Ring sein is said in boxing of the fighter who dominates the bout, and colloquially of anyone who calls the tune.^[9] In Austria the word is pronounced with a long vowel, /ʃeːf/.^[9][10] Unlike English chef, it does not mean a cook; that is Koch or Küchenchef.^[9][1]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 171
3. ^ a b c d Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Schulz, Hans; Basler, Otto, et al. (1913–1988), Deutsches Fremdwörterbuch, 7 vols., Strasbourg / Berlin: Trübner / De Gruyter; 2nd ed., ed. Gerhard Strauß et al. (1995–), Berlin / New York: De Gruyter; via OWID, Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache
5. ^ Wahrig-Burfeind, Renate, ed., Wahrig Herkunftswörterbuch, Gütersloh / München: Wissen Media Verlag; online edition at wissen.de
6. ^ Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2014), 5th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin / Mannheim / Zürich: Dudenverlag, p. 202
7. ^ 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. 5, 1110
8. ^ 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
9. ^ a b c d e f g Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
10. ^ a b c d e Duden. Das Fremdwörterbuch (2007), 9th ed., Duden vol. 5, Mannheim: Dudenverlag