Etymologically
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Seite

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Pronunciation

  • Germany: /ˈzaɪ̯tə/[1]
  • Austria, Southern Germany, Switzerland: /ˈsaɪ̯tɛ/[1]

Forms

Seite f (genitive Seite, plural Seiten)[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German sīte, inherited from Old High German sīta, inherited from Proto-Germanic *sīdǭ (“side, flank”).[2][1] The same word is Old Saxon sīda, Old English sīde, Old Frisian sīde and Old Norse síða, and today Dutch zijde, English side and Swedish sida;[2][3] the word is missing in Gothic.[2][3]

It is generally taken as the noun of an adjective found in Old Norse síðr (“hanging down”), Old English sīd (“wide, ample, long”), Middle Low German sīt (“low”) and Old High German sīto (“slackly”).[2][3][4] The Duden explains it as “the slackly falling part”, first the flank of the body under the arm, then of animals;[5][6] Pfeifer as “the part stretching out long”, linking the adjective with Old Irish sír (“long-lasting”) and with seit.[3] Wiktionary derives the adjective from Proto-Indo-European *seh₁- (“long, lasting”), also mentioning the homonymous root “to sow, drop”, with which the Duden dictionary connects it.[1][6] Kluge calls the motive of the name unclear and the connections in need of study.[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German sīta is first recorded in glosses of the end of the 8th century, then in Tatian, Otfrid and Notker, meaning “side, flank, hip”.[7][8] Notker already speaks of the sides of a house.[9][10]

Semantic evolution

From the side of the body the word was extended to the sides of things and became a general word of direction.[5] In geometry it has meant the line bounding a figure since the 15th century, a loan translation of Latin latus.[3][5] For books it came to mean the written or printed page in Early New High German; pages have been numbered beside leaves since about 1500.[5][3] The sense “party, side in a conflict” dates from the 16th century, but Middle High German already used it of opposing armies.[3] Weak forms of the singular survive in auf Seiten and von Seiten.[9][10]

Adverbs in -seits come from Middle High German phrases in the accusative, such as dissīt and jensīt, with an added -s: diesseits (14th century), jenseits (16th century), andererseits (17th century); from them -seits became a suffix, as in mütterlicherseits (18th century).[3][5] Beseitigen “to remove” is from the 18th century, and the preposition seitens from the 19th.[3] Seitensprung, a jump to the side in the 18th century, was used morally first in Austria in the 19th.[3] The sense “website” followed English web site.[6]

Timeline

  • End of the 8th century – Old High German sīta appears in glosses.[7]
  • 14th century – diesseits is recorded.[3]
  • 15th century – Seite is used in geometry for a side of a figure.[3][5]
  • c. 1500 – Page numbers come into use beside the numbering of leaves.[5]
  • Early 16th century – First record of the sense “page of a book”.[3]
  • 16th century – Seite means a party or faction.[3]
  • 18th century – beseitigen and mütterlicherseits appear.[3]
  • 19th century – seitens replaces von Seiten as a preposition.[3][5]

Meanings

Noun

  1. One of the surfaces that bound a body or object; a side or face of it: die sechs Seiten eines Würfels.[6][1]
  2. The part to the right or left of the middle: auf der anderen Seite der Straße.[6][1]
  3. The right or left side of the human or animal body: Schmerzen in der Seite.[6][11]
  4. (geometry) A line bounding a polygon.[6][1]
  5. A page of a book, newspaper or the like; one side of a sheet.[6][1]
  6. An aspect of a thing or a trait of a person: ihre starke Seite.[6][1]
  7. A party or group opposed to another: die Seite wechseln.[6][1]
  8. (computing) A website or web page.[6][1]

Word family

  • seitens
  • -seits
  • diesseits
  • jenseits
  • andererseits
  • beiseite
  • beseitigen
  • seitlich
  • Seitensprung
  • vonseiten
  • aufseiten
  • Speckseite

Usage notes

Jemandem zur Seite springen or treten “to come to someone's help” goes back to a legal custom: whoever wished to speak for an accused person had to stand beside the accused.[12] Jemanden von der Seite ansehen is to look at someone askance.[9]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 841
  3. ^ 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
  4. ^ Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag, p. 772
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
  7. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
  8. ^ Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 283
  9. ^ a b c Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
  10. ^ a b Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 16, 379
  11. ^ Wiktionary, das freie Wörterbuch (German Wiktionary), de.wiktionary.org
  12. ^ Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag, p. 773