Etymologically
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Medium

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Pronunciation

  • /ˈmeːdi̯ʊm/[1]

Forms

Medium n (genitive Mediums, plural Medien)[1] In some senses the plural is also Media.[2][3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin medium (“the middle; a means”), the neuter of the adjective medius (“in the middle, middle”) used as a noun, borrowed in the 17th century.[4][5][6][7] The Latin adjective is cognate with Mitte.[4][5] The sense “means of mass communication” arose in the middle of the 20th century, probably under the influence of the English plural media.[6][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The word came in during the 17th century as a scientific term, “carrier of a physical process”, and as a grammatical term for the middle voice; the Deutsches Fremdwörterbuch's first record is Bellin's grammar of 1657.[7][5] A translation of Kircher's Musurgia of 1662 explains that sound cannot be carried durch das tremulirende medium (“through the trembling medium”) as sight is through misty air.[7]

Semantic evolution

In the 18th century it came into general figurative use as “means, mediating element”;[5] Wieland rendered it with Mittel, and Herder spoke of ein Mittleres (Medium) that prepares an object for the senses.[7][8] Grammarians also used Media for the voiced stops b, d, g (Bödiker, 1698).[7][5]

From about 1850, following the usage of American spiritualism, a Medium was a person said to communicate with spirits, and later also a subject of hypnotic or psychological experiments.[5][7][6] In the second half of the 20th century the plural Medien came to mean the press, radio and television, with compounds such as Massenmedien and Printmedien;[5][8] Multimedia, with the Latin plural, was the German Word of the Year in 1995.[5][8]

Timeline

  • 1657 – First record, as a grammatical term.[7]
  • 1662 – Used in physics for the medium that carries sound.[7]
  • 1698 – Bödiker uses Media for voiced stops.[7]
  • 18th century – General sense “means, mediating element”.[5]
  • c. 1850 – The spiritualist sense arises; the Deutsches Fremdwörterbuch's first German record is from 1871.[7][8]
  • Second half of the 20th century – Medien “the mass media”.[5][6]
  • 1995 – Multimedia is chosen as Word of the Year.[8]

Meanings

Noun

  1. (formal) A mediating element, a means of expression: Musik als Medium der Verständigung.[2][9]
  2. (usually plural) The media: press, radio, television and the internet: Die Medien berichteten ausführlich über den Unfall.[2][1]
  3. A means of conveying information or a storage medium, such as a book or disc: Die Kassette ist ein veraltetes Medium.[2][9]
  4. (physics, chemistry) A substance through which something passes or in which a process takes place: Schall braucht ein Medium, um sich auszubreiten.[2][1]
  5. (parapsychology) A medium, a person said to communicate with the spirit world.[2][1]
  6. (medicine, psychology) A subject of experiments, especially in hypnosis.[2]
  7. (linguistics) The middle voice.[2][1]

Word family

  • Massenmedien
  • Printmedien
  • Multimedia

Usage notes

The indeclinable adjective medium “medium-rare” (of meat) and “medium” (as a clothing size) is a separate, later borrowing from English.[2][3]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
  3. ^ a b Duden. Das Fremdwörterbuch (2007), 9th ed., Duden vol. 5, Mannheim: Dudenverlag
  4. ^ a b c Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 611
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
  6. ^ a b c d Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2014), 5th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin / Mannheim / Zürich: Dudenverlag, p. 553
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Schulz, Hans; Basler, Otto, et al. (1913–1988), Deutsches Fremdwörterbuch, 7 vols., Strasbourg / Berlin: Trübner / De Gruyter; 2nd ed., ed. Gerhard Strauß et al. (1995–), Berlin / New York: De Gruyter; via OWID, Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache
  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. ^ a b Wiktionary, das freie Wörterbuch (German Wiktionary), de.wiktionary.org