Fehler

Forms

Fehler m (genitive Fehlers, plural Fehler)^[1]

Etymology

It is a noun formed in the 16th century from German fehlen (“to miss, fail”) + -er; it has the shape of an agent noun, but names the action, and was first used of a shot that misses its mark.^[2][3] The verb is Middle High German vælen, borrowed in the 13th century from Old French faillir (“to miss, be mistaken”), which goes back to Latin fallō (“to deceive”).^[2][4][5] In Middle High German it was a word of the tournament, used when the lance missed its target, and it soon also meant to be wrong, to fail and to be lacking, as the French verb did.^[3][4] The same French verb gave Dutch falen and English fail, and its noun gave fault and French faute.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The oldest uses are in the phrase einen Fehler schießen “to shoot a miss”, from shooting with the bow and not hitting: the preacher Geiler von Kaysersberg says of foolish people that they have shot a miss, and the Grimms' dictionary takes the word from this phrase.^[6] The revised Grimm dictionary has a Swiss record of 1470 for an offence against a rule, in Frickart's account of the dispute over the Bernese lords' rights.^[7] The Duden dictionary dates the first sense, “a shot that missed”, to about 1500.^[8]

Semantic evolution

Beside the missed shot, the word early named a blank in a lottery, the opposite of Treffer “hit, winning ticket”, a use still found in Gellert and Goethe.^[6] From the 16th century on it meant a wrong act or an offence against a rule, and in the 17th century a moral fault, as in a 1639 instruction that a son or daughter who commits a punishable Fehler should be strictly punished.^[7] The Grimms also list bodily defects, mistakes in reading, writing, counting and printing, as in the compounds Druckfehler and Rechenfehler, flaws in a wall and faults of the mind and character.^[6] Today the word covers anything that departs from what is right, a wrong decision, and a bad quality or a flaw in a manufactured article.^[8]

The word passed into some neighbouring languages: Slovene has faler and falinga, and the Polish dialect of Cieszyn feler.^[9]

Timeline

• 13th century – The verb vælen, the base of the noun, is borrowed from Old French.^[2]
• 1470 – A Swiss record uses faͤler for an offence against a rule.^[7]
• About 1500 – First use in the sense “a shot that missed”.^[8]
• 16th century – Kluge dates the noun to this century.^[2]
• 1669 – Grimmelshausen's Simplicissimus speaks of the Fehler a man commits against God.^[7]
• 1782 – Adelung calls a Low German plural in -s a Fehler in High German.^[7]

Meanings

Noun

1. Something that is wrong or departs from what is correct; a mistake or error: Im Brief standen drei Fehler.^[8][1]
2. (sports) A fault or foul, as given by the referee.^[8]
3. A wrong decision or step; a blunder: Es war ein Fehler, so früh abzureisen.^[8]
4. A bad quality or failing in a person, a defect: Sein größter Fehler ist die Ungeduld.^[8]
5. A flaw in a manufactured article: Diese Tassen haben kleine Fehler und sind billiger.^[8]

Word family

• Druckfehler
• Rechenfehler
• Schreibfehler
• fehlerhaft
• fehlerlos

Related words

• fehlen
• Fehl
• verfehlen
• falsch

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 284
3. ^ a b 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 Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag, p. 261
5. ^ Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
6. ^ a b c Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 3, 1427
7. ^ a b c d e 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, 251
8. ^ a b c d e f g h Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
9. ^ Lehnwortportal Deutsch (2012–), Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim, lwp.ids-mannheim.de