Etymologically
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Fall

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Pronunciation

Forms

Fall m (genitive Falles or Falls, plural Fälle)[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German val, inherited from Old High German fal, inherited from Proto-West Germanic *fall, first the noun of action of fallen.[2][3][1] Kluge reconstructs a pre-German masculine a-stem and notes that the other Germanic languages have different stem formations;[2] corresponding nouns are Old Saxon fal, Old English feall, Old Norse fall, a neuter, Dutch val and English fall.[4][1]

The verb, Old High German fallan, Proto-Germanic *fallaną, once had a present-tense nasal, its /ll/ coming from /ln/.[3][5] Pfeifer compares it, at most, with Old Armenian փուլ (pʿul, “collapse”) and Lithuanian pùlti (“to fall”), and perhaps with Ancient Greek σφάλλω (sphállō, “to trip up, overthrow”), from a root meaning “to fall”.[3]

The image of falling dice and the many senses of Latin cāsus (“fall, occurrence, chance, case”), which the Old High German noun already translated, shaped the later meanings; phrases with French cas added more.[2][3][6] As a term of grammar the word is a loan meaning of the Latin noun (17th century), itself a translation of Ancient Greek πτῶσις (ptôsis, “a falling”), which named the grammatical cases after the different ways dice fall.[2][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German fal is recorded in glosses of 765 and then in Isidor, the Tatian, Otfrid and Notker, meaning “fall, collapse, downfall, ruin” and “stumbling block”, for Latin casus, ruina and scandalum.[7][6][8] The Tatian (about 830) renders Matthew 7:27 as inti iz fiel, inti uúas sin fal mihhil “and it fell, and great was its fall”.[9]

Semantic evolution

Middle High German val was used of the fall of dice, of water and of tones, and meant “fall, defeat, ruin, death”, a criminal case, and a due paid to the lord on a tenant's death.[6][10] From the fall of the dice came words for chance and possibility, and with the model of Latin cāsus the senses “event, case, legal matter”.[6][2] Phrases such as setzen wir den Fall, auf alle Fälle and das ist ganz mein Fall follow French posons le cas, en tout cas and c'est là mon cas.[3][6] For the grammatical case the loan translation Fall won out over the loanwords from Latin and French from Adelung's time on.[6]

Fixed in genitive forms, the noun became the adverb desfalls and the conjunction falls “in case”.[9] The compound Fallbeil “guillotine” dates from the 17th century.[3]

Timeline

  • 765 – Old High German fal appears in glosses.[7]
  • c. 830 – The Tatian uses fal for the fall of the house in Matthew 7:27.[9]
  • c. 1185 – Hartmann's Erec has einen solhen val er nam “he took such a fall”.[9]
  • 17th century – Fall becomes a grammatical term after Latin cāsus.[2][3]
  • 17th century – Fallbeil is recorded.[3]
  • Late 18th century – From Adelung on, Fall prevails as the German word for grammatical case.[6]

Meanings

Noun

  1. (no plural) The act of falling, a drop;[11][1] der freie Fall (physics) free fall.[11][1]
  2. A tumble or fall;[11][1] (figurative) downfall, collapse: der Fall der Stadt.[11][1]
  3. A possible event, an eventuality: für den Fall, dass es schneit.[11][1]
  4. A matter or instance: ein schwieriger Fall.[11][1]
  5. (law) A case under investigation or trial.[11][1]
  6. (medicine) A case of an illness.[11][1]
  7. (grammar) A grammatical case.[11][1]

Word family

  • Zufall
  • Unfall
  • Wasserfall
  • Sündenfall
  • Todesfall
  • Notfall
  • Einzelfall
  • Sonderfall
  • Fallbeil
  • falls
  • ebenfalls
  • jedenfalls
  • keinesfalls
  • allenfalls
  • Werfall
  • Wesfall
  • Wemfall
  • Wenfall

Usage notes

Common phrases are auf jeden Fall “in any case, definitely”, auf keinen Fall “under no circumstances”, zu Fall bringen “to bring down, defeat” and the colloquial nicht mein Fall “not my cup of tea”.[11] A separate neuter noun das Fall, plural Fallen, is the nautical word for a halyard, the rope used to hoist a sail; it came into German from Low German.[1][12][13]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 274
  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. ^ Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch (1952–), founded by Elisabeth Karg-Gasterstädt and Theodor Frings, Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag / De Gruyter; online awb.saw-leipzig.de, p. 3, 531
  5. ^ Lloyd, Albert L.; Springer, Otto; Lühr, Rosemarie, et al. (1988–), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; online ewa.saw-leipzig.de, p. 3, 36
  6. ^ a b c d e f g Lloyd, Albert L.; Springer, Otto; Lühr, Rosemarie, et al. (1988–), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; online ewa.saw-leipzig.de, p. 3, 21
  7. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
  8. ^ Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 94
  9. ^ a b c d 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. 9, 79
  10. ^ Lexer, Matthias (1872–1878), Mittelhochdeutsches Handwörterbuch, 3 vols., Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 3, 7
  11. ^ 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
  12. ^ Wiktionary, das freie Wörterbuch (German Wiktionary), de.wiktionary.org
  13. ^ Goedel, Gustav (1902), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Seemannssprache, Kiel / Leipzig: Lipsius & Tischer