Jahr

Forms

Jahr n (genitive Jahres or Jahrs, plural Jahre or Jahr, diminutive Jährchen n or Jährlein n)^[1] In the older language the plural was the same as the singular, jahr; the modern Jahre was formed on the model of the masculine nouns.^[2] The old plural survives after numerals, as in Lessing's vier bis fünf jahr verreiset (“away for four or five years”).^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German jār, inherited from Old High German jār, inherited from Proto-West Germanic *jār, inherited from Proto-Germanic *jērą (“year”).^[3][4][1] The same word is Gothic 𐌾𐌴𐍂 (jēr), Old Norse ár, Old English gēar, Old Frisian jēr and Old Saxon jār, beside Old Saxon gēr.^[3][5] Kluge lists Dutch jaar, English year, Swedish år and Icelandic ár as the modern forms.^[3]

Outside Germanic, Kluge compares, with the o-grade, Ancient Greek ὥρα (hṓra, “season, year, time, prime”) and the later ὧρος (hôros, “year”), as well as Avestan yār- (“year”) and Latin hōrnus (“of this year”).^[3] Pfeifer adds Old Church Slavonic ꙗра (jara, “spring”) and reconstructs Proto-Indo-European *i̯ēro- (“year, summer”) beside *i̯ōro-.^[4] Kroonen sets up a heteroclitic noun, nominative *ióh₁-r, genitive *iéh₁-n-s: most languages added an r-suffix, but Avestan kept the old r/n inflection.^[5] The Greek word is also the source of Uhr, so that the two German words are doublets.^[1][6]

The original meaning is uncertain.^[6] Kluge starts from “spring”: years were counted by springs, and the name of the season came to mean the whole year.^[3] Wahrig takes the same view.^[7] Pfeifer and Duden instead consider a noun from a long-vowel form of the root Proto-Indo-European *ei- (“to go”), also in eō (“to go”), which would make the first sense “course, passage (of the sun)”.^[4][6] Kluge points out that the Germanic vowel does not fit the other languages and calls this connection very uncertain.^[3] The Grimms' dictionary had already found the vowels too far apart for a secure comparison.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German jār is first recorded in glosses of 765, and then in Isidor, the Tatian, Otfrid and Notker, meaning “year”.^[8][9] Schützeichel records phrases such as al thaz jār “the whole year through, always” and bī jārōn “over the years, in time”.^[9]

Semantic evolution

According to Duden, the word played a minor part in common Germanic, because the year was mostly counted in winters: the word Winter also meant “year”.^[6] Paul distinguishes old uses side by side: the year of growth and its seasons (still in Frühjahr and Spätjahr), the calendar year (as in Neujahr), the year of one's life (ein mann in seinen besten jahren, in Gellert) and the year of account.^[10] The medieval legal formula Jahr und Tag, one year and six weeks (and three days), lives on as a fixed phrase for “a fairly long time”.^[10]

The compound Jahrmarkt is already Old High German jārmarkāt (around 1000).^[4] Jahrhundert was coined in the 17th century to render Latin saeculum, and in 1755 it was still criticised as un-German and unintelligible.^[4] Jahrzehnt and Jahrtausend followed its pattern in the 18th century, for Latin decennium and millennium.^[4][10] Jahreszeit “season” dates from the 17th or 18th century.^[4][6] In Czech, jár was taken from German in the sense “school year”, and English uses Wanderjahr, the year a journeyman travelled.^[11]

Timeline

• 765 – Old High German jār appears in glosses.^[8]
• Around 1000 – Old High German jārmarkāt “annual fair” is recorded.^[4]
• 16th century – bejahrt “aged”, literally “provided with years”, appears.^[4]
• 1663 – Schottelius uses Jahrhundert, which becomes the usual word for Latin saeculum; in 1647 it had been translated Hundertjährung.^[10]
• 1730 – First record of Jahrzehnt.^[10]
• 1751 – First record of Jahrtausend.^[10]
• 1893 – English Wanderjahr is first recorded.^[11]

Meanings

Noun

1. A year: a period of twelve months, the time in which the earth goes once round the sun; a calendar year: Im nächsten Jahr ziehen wir nach Leipzig.^[12][1]
2. A year of a person's life, with regard to their age: Sie ist zwölf Jahre alt.^[12][13]
3. A year at school or college, a grade or year group.^[1]
4. (astronomy) The time any planet takes to go round its star once.^[1]

Word family

• bejahrt
• Jahreszeit
• Jahrgang
• Jahrhundert
• jährlich
• Jahrmarkt
• Lichtjahr
• Neujahr
• Halbjahr
• jahrelang
• jähren
• verjähren
• Jahrzehnt
• Jahrtausend
• Jahrbuch
• jährig
• minderjährig
• volljährig
• Jährling

Related words

• heuer
• Uhr
• English year

Usage notes

Jahr und Tag (seit Jahr und Tag, vor Jahr und Tag) “a long time” goes back to a legal term of one year and six weeks.^[10] In den besten Jahren is “in the prime of life”, and zwischen den Jahren is the time between Christmas and New Year.^[10][1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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. 10, 2230
3. ^ a b c d e f Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 454
4. ^ 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
5. ^ a b Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
6. ^ a b c d e Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag, p. 401
7. ^ Wahrig-Burfeind, Renate, ed., Wahrig Herkunftswörterbuch, Gütersloh / München: Wissen Media Verlag; online edition at wissen.de
8. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
9. ^ a b Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 169
10. ^ a b c d e f g h Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
11. ^ a b Lehnwortportal Deutsch (2012–), Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim, lwp.ids-mannheim.de
12. ^ a b Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
13. ^ Wiktionary, das freie Wörterbuch (German Wiktionary), de.wiktionary.org