Etymologically
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Datum

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Pronunciation

  • /ˈdaːtʊm/[1]

Forms

Datum n (genitive Datums, plural Daten)[1] The word long kept Latin endings: the Latin ablative survives in dato, as in bis dato “until now”, a phrase of the chancery language recorded from 1601.[2][3] Early forms also include Data and Date as feminines, after Latin data and French date.[4]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin datum (“given; issued”), the neuter past participle of dō (“to give”) used as a noun.[5][3][4] The Latin verb also meant “to issue, write out” a document, and since antiquity its participle had opened the clause of a letter or charter that named the place and day of issue.[3][6][4] German charters took over the formula, first in Latin from the 13th century and then followed by a German date, and the participle was gradually detached from it and became an independent noun meaning the date itself.[5][3][2]

The same word is Dutch datum and Swedish datum, while English date and French date continue the feminine form of the participle.[5][4] The Latin verb is related to Ancient Greek δίδωμι (dídōmi, “to give”).[6] German has borrowed several other words of the same family, among them Mandat, Tradition, Edition and Dativ.[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Latin formula is first found in German charters in 1259 (datum anno domini … “given in the year of the Lord …”), and in 1291 it introduces a German date: datum Matrei am 2 december.[4][7] The noun Datum, meaning the issue of a document and then its date, follows in the late 13th and 14th centuries;[3][2] Paul finds a plural die daten with German inflection in 1352.[3][2]

Semantic evolution

By the end of the 17th century the Latin formula word had given way to German translations such as gegeben and geschehen, while the noun lived on.[7] Adelung (1793) knows it only as the day and year written on a document or letter.[8] In the 16th century it was also used for a person's aim or hope, mostly a worldly one, in the phrase sein Datum auf etwas setzen, common in Luther, Hans Sachs and the proverb collections;[9][8][10] Adelung counts it among the lowest registers.[9][8][10]

A second line of use goes back to the Latin noun datum “something given”: from the 17th and especially the 18th century the language of science used it, mostly in the plural Data, for given quantities in mathematics and then for facts gained from observation.[3][4] The German plural Daten gained ground from the early 19th century and won out in the 20th.[3][2] From the 1950s, after English data, Daten came to mean information stored and processed by computers, and it formed many compounds: Datenverarbeitung (1956, after English data processing), Datenbank (1967, after data bank), Datenschutz and Datei (1968, formed on the model of Kartei).[2][6]

Timeline

  • 1259 – The Latin dating formula datum appears in a German charter.[4][7]
  • 1291 – Datum introduces a German date (datum Matrei am 2 december).[4]
  • 1352 – A plural die daten with German inflection is recorded.[2]
  • 16th century – The verb datieren is formed, after French dater.[2][6]
  • 1601 – bis dato “until now” is recorded in the chancery language.[2]
  • Early 19th century – The German plural Daten begins to replace Data for “given facts”.[3][2]
  • 1956 – elektronische Datenverarbeitung is recorded, after English data processing.[2]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A date: the day of the calendar, usually with month and year: Welches Datum haben wir heute? Der Brief trägt kein Datum.[11][1]
  2. A point in time, the date of an event: ein wichtiges Datum der Stadtgeschichte.[11]
  3. (chiefly in the plural Daten) A given fact or quantity, a datum; in the plural, data, information obtained by measurement or observation and processed by computers.[11][1][6]

Word family

  • Mandat
  • Dativ
  • Tradition
  • English date

Usage notes

The plural Daten serves both senses, but in practice it usually means “data”; for calendar dates one often says Termine or uses the singular.[1][6] The Latin form datum “written, issued” (abbreviated dat.) is found in old letters and charters.[11]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. ^ a b c d Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 182
  6. ^ a b c d e f Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2014), 5th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin / Mannheim / Zürich: Dudenverlag, p. 210
  7. ^ a b c 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. 6, 383
  8. ^ a b c Adelung, Johann Christoph (1793–1801), Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart, 2nd ed., 4 vols., Leipzig: Breitkopf, p. 1, 1416
  9. ^ a b Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 2, 828
  10. ^ a b Anderson, Robert R.; Goebel, Ulrich; Reichmann, Oskar, eds. (1989–), Frühneuhochdeutsches Wörterbuch, Berlin / New York: De Gruyter; FWB-online, fwb-online.de
  11. ^ a b c d Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag