Farbe

Forms

Farbe f (genitive Farbe, plural Farben)^[1] Forms with b appear from the 14th century, become more frequent in the 15th and prevail in the 16th; the short form var is rare and not found after Middle High German.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German varwe, inherited from Old High German farawa, inherited from Proto-Germanic *farwō.^[3][1][4] The same word is Middle Low German varwe, Middle Dutch varwe and Dutch verf (“paint”); the Scandinavian words such as Swedish färg were borrowed from Middle Low German.^[4] The Speyer fragment of the Gothic Bible has the dative Gothic 𐍆𐌰𐍂𐍅𐌰 (farwa, “form, appearance”).^[3][4]

Pfeifer, the revised Grimm and Kroonen take the noun as the feminine of an adjective Old High German faro (“coloured”), built with a w-suffix, common in colour words, on the root Proto-Indo-European *perḱ- (“spotted, speckled”), as in Ancient Greek περκνός (perknós, “dark-spotted”) and Sanskrit पृश्नि (pṛ́śni, “spotted”).^[5][2][6] Kluge instead starts from the Gothic sense “shape” and derives it from a root meaning “to make, shape”, that of Latin corpus (see Körper); the sense “colour” would then have arisen in compounds such as rōsenfaro (“having the look of roses”).^[3][7] Must instead proposed a borrowing of Arabic فرو (farw, “fur, coloured furs”).^[5][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German far(a)wa is first recorded in an 8th-century gloss, and then in Isidor, the Monsee fragments, Otfrid and Notker, meaning colour, appearance, shape, rendering Latin color, facies, forma and tinctura.^[2][4][9] Notker (before 1022) writes of the morning star shining in scônero fareuuo “in fair colour”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Already in Old High German the word could mean the colour of the face.^[8] In Middle High German it is clearly the visible colour of things, as in diu heide ist manger varwe rîch “the heath is rich in many colours”.^[2] The sense “dye, paint” comes from the colouring substance; the 15th-century Templars' rule speaks of the colours of their dress.^[2]

From the plural of national colours (Staatsfarben in Adelung) came, in the mid-19th century, the colours of a political party, and earlier those of a student fraternity.^[8] The card-game sense is behind Farbe bekennen “to show one's true colours”, literally “to follow suit”.^[7] Goethe's Farbenlehre (1810) distinguished many kinds of colours.^[8] The word was borrowed into Polish, Slovak, Slovene, Hungarian, Ukrainian and other languages as farba.^[1][10]

Timeline

• 8th century – Old High German farouua in a gloss.^[2]
• Before 1022 – Notker uses fareuua.^[2]
• 9th century – The verb far(a)wen “to colour” appears.^[5]
• 14th century – Forms with b appear.^[2]
• 16th century – farbig is first recorded; forms with b prevail.^[5][2]
• Mid-19th century – Farben stands for a political party.^[8]

Meanings

Noun

1. colour, the appearance of things that depends on how they reflect light: Rot ist ihre Lieblingsfarbe.^[11][1][12]
2. paint, dye, a colouring substance: Die Farbe an der Tür ist noch nicht trocken.^[11][1]
3. (plural) The colours of a country, club or party, as its symbol: die Farben seines Vereins vertreten.^[11][12]
4. A suit in a game of cards.^[11][1]
5. (heraldry) A tincture.^[1]

Word family

• färben
• farbig
• farblich
• farblos
• Färber
• Schönfärberei
• Farbstoff

Related words

• Forelle

Usage notes

Farbe bekennen (colloquial), “to declare one's real opinion”, comes from card games, where it means to play a card of the suit called for.^[7] Of the face, die Farbe wechseln is to go pale and then red.^[11]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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, 136
3. ^ a b c Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 277
4. ^ a b c d Lloyd, Albert L.; Springer, Otto; Lühr, Rosemarie, et al. (1988–), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; online ewa.saw-leipzig.de, p. 3, 62
5. ^ 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
6. ^ Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
7. ^ a b c Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag, p. 256
8. ^ a b c d e Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
9. ^ Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 97
10. ^ Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 3, 1321
11. ^ a b c d e Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
12. ^ a b Wiktionary, das freie Wörterbuch (German Wiktionary), de.wiktionary.org