Mann

Forms

Mann m (strong or mixed, genitive Mannes or Manns, plural Männer or (rare or poetic) Mannen or (obsolete) Mann, diminutive Männchen n or Männlein n or Männle n or Mannli n or Männeken n or Mandl n or Manderl n, feminine Männin)^[1] Middle High German had the unchanged plural man beside manne and mannen;^[2] the umlauted plural appears from the 15th century.^[3][2] The old plural without ending survives after numbers and in the seamen's command alle Mann an Deck.^[3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German man, inherited from Old High German man, inherited from Proto-West Germanic *mann, inherited from Proto-Germanic *mann- (“man, person”).^[5][1] Kluge sets up an n-stem Proto-Germanic *manōn- (“man, human being”), which in some cases lost the vowel of its suffix and so gave the stem with double /nn/.^[5] The same word is Gothic 𐌼𐌰𐌽𐌽𐌰 (manna), Old Norse maðr, Old English mann, Old Frisian mon and Old Saxon man, and today Dutch man, English man and Swedish man.^[5][6][7]

Its further origin is disputed.^[5][6] Pfeifer and the Duden compare Sanskrit मनु (mánu, “man, mankind”) and the name Latin Mannus, the ancestor of the Germanic peoples in Tacitus, and reconstruct Proto-Indo-European *manu- or *monu-.^[6][8] They connect this most often with the root Proto-Indo-European *men- (“to think”) of mahnen, so that the man would be named as “the thinking being”, but also mention *men- (“to rise, tower”), which would make him “the one who walks upright”.^[6][8] Kluge instead takes the Germanic word as a by-form of Proto-Germanic *gumōn- (“man”), the source of the second part of Bräutigam, from an ablaut form *gmanōn whose initial cluster was simplified; Lithuanian žmonės (“people”) would be a parallel formation.^[5] Kroonen follows this view, and Wiktionary gives both explanations.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German man is first recorded in glosses of about 765 and then throughout the Old High German texts, from the Hildebrandslied, the Benedictine Rule and Otfrid to Notker.^[9][10] It meant “human being” as well as “man, servant, warrior”, and in phrases such as mannes sunu “the Son of Man”.^[10][9]

Semantic evolution

The general sense “human being” was still common up to Luther, and it survives in the indefinite pronoun man and in jemand and niemand.^[3][6][8] The Grimms explain the narrowing to “adult male” by the old legal view in which only a man had the full standing of a person.^[11] In Middle High German the word also meant “husband”, “son”, “servant” and “vassal”.^[12][6] The feudal sense lives on in the plural Mannen “followers, retainers”, which was revived in the 18th century and is now used ironically or in sports writing.^[3][8]

Many phrases date from early modern German: Not am Mann from the 17th century, mit Mann und Maus “with all on board, completely” from the 18th, and etwas an den Mann bringen “to sell or pass something on” from Klopstock.^[3] Selbst ist der Mann is recorded from the 16th century.^[3] Der kleine Mann for the ordinary person became fixed through Hans Fallada's novel Kleiner Mann – was nun? (1932).^[3] As the second part of words for occupations (Kaufmann, Seemann, Zimmermann) -mann has since the 1970s often been paired with or replaced by -frau.^[3]

Timeline

• c. 765 – Old High German man appears in glosses.^[9]
• 1060–1065 – Middle High German man is used by Williram.^[12]
• 15th century – The plural Männer (menner) appears.^[2][3]
• 16th century – Selbst ist der Mann is recorded.^[3]
• 17th century – The phrase Not am Mann is recorded.^[3]
• 18th century – Mit Mann und Maus is recorded,^[3] and the plural Mannen “retainers” is revived.^[3]
• 1932 – Fallada's novel Kleiner Mann – was nun? fixes kleiner Mann for the ordinary person.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. An adult male person, a man.^[4][1]
2. A husband: Ihr Mann arbeitet in Kiel.^[4][1]
3. (plural Mannen, historical or humorous) Vassals, followers, retainers; also the members of a team.^[4][3]
4. (plural Mann, after numbers) Used to count people: Die Mannschaft zählt elf Mann.^[4][13]
5. (colloquial) An exclamation of surprise or annoyance: Mann, ist das kalt!^[4][13]

Word family

• männlich
• mannhaft
• Mannschaft
• Männchen
• Mannsbild
• bemannen
• entmannen
• ermannen
• übermannen
• jedermann

Related words

• man
• Mensch
• jemand
• niemand
• Bräutigam

Usage notes

Ein Mann, ein Wort is said of a man who keeps his promises, and seinen Mann stehen means to prove oneself.^[4] Der Mann im Mond is the figure people see in the dark patches of the moon.^[4][3]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Lexer, Matthias (1872–1878), Mittelhochdeutsches Handwörterbuch, 3 vols., Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 1, 2021
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
5. ^ a b c d e Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 599
6. ^ 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
7. ^ Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
8. ^ a b c d Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag
9. ^ a b c Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
10. ^ a b Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 214
11. ^ Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 12, 1553
12. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
13. ^ a b Wiktionary, das freie Wörterbuch (German Wiktionary), de.wiktionary.org