Nacht

Forms

Nacht f (genitive Nacht, plural Nächte, diminutive Nächtchen n)^[1] The old consonant-stem endings were gradually replaced by those of the i-declension; remnants are Middle High German genitive and dative nahte and plural naht, and the dative bei Nachte in poets of the 17th–19th centuries.^[2] Beside the genitive Nacht there has been, since Old High German, a genitive Nachts formed after Tages, which gave the adverb nachts and the phrase des Nachts.^[3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German naht, inherited from Old High German naht, inherited from Proto-West Germanic *naht, inherited from Proto-Germanic *nahts (“night”).^[5][4][1] The same word is Gothic 𐌽𐌰𐌷𐍄𐍃 (nahts), Old Norse nótt and nátt, Old English niht (now English night), Old Frisian nacht and Old Saxon naht;^[5][4][6] Kluge also lists Dutch nacht, Swedish natt and Icelandic nótt.^[5]

It continues the Indo-European word for “night”, Proto-Indo-European *nókʷts, found in Sanskrit नक्त् (nákt), Ancient Greek νύξ (núx), Latin nox, Old Irish nocht, Welsh nos, Lithuanian naktìs, Old Church Slavonic нощь (noštĭ) and Russian ночь (nočʹ).^[5][4][1] The forms of Greek and of Hittite nekuz “at evening” (from a verb “it grows dark”) point to a root with a labiovelar and a /t/ suffix, and Kluge infers from the Hittite verb that the starting sense may have been “dusk, evening”.^[5][4][7] Kroonen reconstructs a static stem, nominative *nókʷ-t-s, genitive *nékʷ-t-s, and suggests that it lost an initial dental, connecting it with the Germanic word for “dark”; this is his own proposal.^[6]

Pfeifer explains the wide agreement of the Indo-European languages, unlike the words for “day”, by the use of the night as a unit of time: the moon, on which months and years were counted, can be watched only at night.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German naht is recorded in the 8th century in the Abrogans and the Samanunga glosses, then in Isidor, Tatian, Otfrid, Notker and other texts, meaning night, evening, darkness and gloom.^[8][9] The early texts already have phrases such as mittiu naht “midnight”, wahta dera naht “night watch” and tages inti nahtes “day and night”.^[8][10]

Semantic evolution

Germanic peoples counted by nights rather than days, and the night was reckoned before the day;^[3][4][11] Paul cites Tacitus (Germania 11).^[3][4][11] Hence the old sense “eve”, kept in Fastnacht and Weihnachten, whose ending is an old dative plural without umlaut, and Middle High German siben nehte “a week”, beside English fortnight.^[11][3][4] In southern Germany Nacht also stands where the north says Abend: gestern Nacht, zu Nacht essen, Nachtmahl (Austrian nachtmahlen).^[3][4] The order Nacht und Tag was still usual in Luther's time.^[3]

From Jean Paul and the Romantics on, the night became in literature the realm of death, the irrational and the unconscious, as in Novalis's Hymnen an die Nacht (1800).^[3] Bei Nacht und Nebel “secretly and unexpectedly” was in Middle High German only an intensified expression for a dark night.^[3] Derivatives include nächtlich (Old High German nahtlīh, about 800), übernachten (16th century), umnachten (18th century, now mostly geistig umnachtet “mentally deranged”) and nächtigen (19th century), and the plant name Nachtschatten (Old High German nahtscato, 11th century).^[4][11]

Timeline

• 8th century – Old High German naht in the Abrogans glosses.^[8][5]
• About 800 – nahtlīh “nightly”.^[4]
• 11th century – nahtscato “nightshade”.^[4]
• 16th century – übernachten “to stay the night”.^[4][11]
• 18th century – umnachten.^[4][11]
• 1800 – Novalis, Hymnen an die Nacht.^[3]
• 19th century – nächtigen.^[4][11]

Meanings

Noun

1. night, the time between nightfall and dawn: Die Nächte werden wieder kälter.;^[12][1] heute Nacht, tonight or last night.^[12][1]
2. (poetic) darkness, gloom: die Nacht des Todes.^[12][1]

Word family

• nachts
• nächtlich
• nächtigen
• übernachten
• umnachten
• Mitternacht
• Weihnachten
• Fastnacht
• Walpurgisnacht
• Nachtigall
• Nachtschatten
• Nachtmahl
• Nachthemd
• Nachtwächter

Related words

• nüchtern
• English night

Usage notes

Fixed phrases include Gute Nacht!, the greeting before going to sleep, die Heilige Nacht (Christmas Eve), die Zwölf Nächte between Christmas and Epiphany, über Nacht “overnight, suddenly” and die Nacht zum Tage machen “to stay up all night”.^[12][1] Na, dann gute Nacht! (colloquial) expresses disappointment or resignation.^[12] Adelung quotes the proverb Bey der Nacht sind alle Katzen grau.^[13]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 13, 145
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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 i j k l m n o p 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 c d e f Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 646
6. ^ a b Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
7. ^ Wahrig-Burfeind, Renate, ed., Wahrig Herkunftswörterbuch, Gütersloh / München: Wissen Media Verlag; online edition at wissen.de
8. ^ a b c Lloyd, Albert L.; Springer, Otto; Lühr, Rosemarie, et al. (1988–), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; online ewa.saw-leipzig.de, p. 6, 772
9. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
10. ^ Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 233
11. ^ a b c d e f g Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2014), 5th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin / Mannheim / Zürich: Dudenverlag, p. 583
12. ^ a b c d e Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
13. ^ Adelung, Johann Christoph (1793–1801), Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart, 2nd ed., 4 vols., Leipzig: Breitkopf, p. 3, 392