Hintergrund

Forms

Hintergrund m (genitive Hintergrundes or Hintergrunds, plural Hintergründe)^[1]

Etymology

It is a compound from German hinter (“behind, rear”) + Grund (“ground”), first used in the later 18th century of painting and the stage.^[2][3][4] Wiktionary suggests that English background may have played a part.^[1]

The first part is Middle High German hinder, Old High German hintar, Proto-Germanic *hinder (“behind”), also found in Gothic 𐌷𐌹𐌽𐌳𐌰𐍂 (hindar) and Old English hinder.^[5][2] Kluge takes it to be the accusative neuter of an old comparative or contrastive formation in Proto-Indo-European *-tero-, with the superlatives Gothic 𐌷𐌹𐌽𐌳𐌿𐌼𐌹𐍃𐍄𐍃 (hindumists, “hindmost, last”) and Old English hindema beside it, built on a pronominal stem.^[5][6] The second part is Middle High German grunt, Old High German grunt, Proto-Germanic *grunduz (“ground, bottom”), as in Gothic 𐌲𐍂𐌿𐌽𐌳𐌿𐍅𐌰𐌳𐌳𐌾𐌿𐍃 (grunduwaddjus, “foundation wall”), Old Norse grunnr and Old English grund.^[7] Kluge regards its further origin as unexplained, while Duden connects it with a root meaning “to grind”.^[7][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Adelung's dictionary (1775) records Hintergrund as the rear part of a painting, on which everything is painted while the figures must seem to stand apart from it, and as the back of a stage, in contrast to the Vordergrund.^[9][4] The Grimms' dictionary quotes Schiller's stage direction “in the middle of the background a large glass door” from Fiesko.^[10]

Semantic evolution

From the stage the word passed into ordinary speech in fixed phrases such as in den Hintergrund treten “to recede into the background” and etwas in den Hintergrund stellen.^[10] Goethe wrote that the ancient languages had been pushed in den Hintergrund, and Schiller's Don Karlos asks who knows what slumbers in der Zeiten Hintergrunde “in the background of the times”.^[10][4]

In the 20th century it came to mean the basic but less prominent circumstances of something, both in the singular, as the background of a novel, and in the plural, as politische Hintergründe.^[4][2] The adjective hintergründig “of hidden meaning, hard to see through” appears around 1920 and spread from the middle of the century.^[2][4] Modern German has many compounds, among them Migrationshintergrund “migrant background”.^[1]

Timeline

• 8th century – The Old High German superlative hintarōsto is recorded; the preposition hintar follows in the 9th century.^[5]
• 1775 – Adelung records Hintergrund in painting and of the stage.^[4][9]
• Later 18th century – The word passes into ordinary speech in phrases such as in den Hintergrund treten.^[10][2]
• 20th century – First use for the circumstances behind an event, often in the plural.^[4]
• c. 1920 – First record of the adjective hintergründig.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The background, the rear part of a field of view, of a picture or of a stage, against which things stand out: Im Hintergrund des Fotos sieht man die Berge.^[11][1]
2. In phrases: in den Hintergrund treten or geraten, to lose importance;^[11] jemanden in den Hintergrund drängen, to push someone aside;^[11] im Hintergrund bleiben, to stay out of the public eye.^[11]
3. Something that accompanies what one perceives at its edge: der akustische Hintergrund, the background noise.^[11]
4. The less obvious circumstances and conditions of an event or situation; its context: Der Film hat einen historischen Hintergrund.^[11][1]
5. Hidden connections that explain something, mostly in the plural: die Hintergründe des Anschlags.^[11]
6. A person's training, experience or origins: ein solider wissenschaftlicher Hintergrund.^[11][3]

Word family

• hintergründig
• Hintergrundgeräusch
• Hintergrundstrahlung
• Migrationshintergrund

Related words

• hinter
• Grund
• Vordergrund
• Hintern

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
3. ^ a b Wiktionary, das freie Wörterbuch (German Wiktionary), de.wiktionary.org
4. ^ a b c d e f g Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
5. ^ a b c Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 417
6. ^ Lloyd, Albert L.; Springer, Otto; Lühr, Rosemarie, et al. (1988–), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; online ewa.saw-leipzig.de, p. 4, 1045
7. ^ a b Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 378
8. ^ Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag, p. 343
9. ^ a b Adelung, Johann Christoph (1793–1801), Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart, 2nd ed., 4 vols., Leipzig: Breitkopf
10. ^ a b c d Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 10, 1503
11. ^ a b c d e f g h Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag