Stück

Forms

Stück n (genitive Stückes or Stücks, plural Stücke or Stücker or Stück, diminutive Stückchen n or Stücklein n or Stückerl n)^[1] Weak plural forms (Stücken) spread from the 17th century, starting from in Stücken, and the strong forms only fully prevailed again around the middle of the 19th century.^[2] After numbers the word is usually uninflected (drei Stück), and colloquial German also has a plural Stücker.^[3][1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German stücke, inherited from Old High German stucki, inherited from Proto-West Germanic *stukkī, inherited from Proto-Germanic *stukkiją (“piece, stump”).^[4][5][1] The same word is Old Saxon stukki, Middle Low German stücke, Middle Dutch stucke, Old Frisian stekk, Old English stycce and Old Norse stykki, with Dutch stuk and Swedish stycke; it is not recorded in Gothic.^[4][5][2]

Kluge connects it with Stock, so that it first meant “something cut off”, perhaps a sheaf.^[4] Pfeifer and the Duden place both words, in the sense “something struck off”, with stoßen, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)teug-, an extension of *(s)teu- (“to push, strike”), and explain the Germanic form by expressive doubling of the consonant and a /j/ suffix.^[5][6][7] The Grimms accept a common root with the word for “stick” but reject a direct derivation on grounds of meaning, rule out a link with stechen, and compare Old Irish tocht (“part, piece”) and Lithuanian stùngis (“stump of a knife”).^[2] Wiktionary also gives a derivation from Proto-Germanic *stikaną (“to stick”) or its iterative.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German stucki is recorded from 765 in glosses and then in Notker, meaning a part, section or distance, a morsel or bite, a crust and a piece of gold;^[8][5] Notker writes stucchiu brotes “pieces of bread”.^[3] Middle High German used it for a part, a section or article, a single whole object, a piece of farmland, a measure and a way of doing something.^[5][9][3]

Semantic evolution

From “cut-off part” the word passed to “a self-contained part”, as in ein Stück Brot and Frühstück, and to “a counted item”, as in fünf Stück Vieh.^[6] In Early New High German it also meant a section of a text (Luther's Stücke in Esther) and a stretch of way; from Middle High German on it was a length of cloth, and in 1565 a coin.^[3] From the 16th to the 18th century Stück meant a cannon, a piece of a battery, which survives in bestücken “to arm with guns” (18th century), later “to equip”;^[5][6] the sense “play, stage work” dates from the 18th century.^[6]

Stückwerk “piecework” (end of the 14th century) took its sense “something imperfect” from Luther's translation of Latin ex parte in 1 Corinthians 13:9.^[5][6] Pfeifer dates aus einem Stück to the 17th century and Stück für Stück to the 18th, after an older Stück vor Stück, while Paul finds Stück für Stück in Hulsius in 1618.^[5][3] The word was borrowed into the Slavic languages, as Polish sztuka and Russian штука (štuka);^[2][1] Hungarian stikli “daring prank” (1871) is a German loan.^[10]

Timeline

• 765 – Old High German stucki in glosses.^[8]
• End of the 14th century – Stückwerk “piecework”.^[5]
• 15th century – stückeln “to cut into pieces”.^[5]
• 16th century – Stück “cannon”;^[5][6] Luther's Stückwerk “imperfect thing”.^[5][6]
• 1565 – Stück for a coin.^[3]
• 17th century – Weak plurals such as Stücken spread.^[2]
• 18th century – Stück “play”;^[6][5] bestücken “to arm with guns”.^[6][5]
• Mid-19th century – The strong plural Stücke prevails again.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A piece cut or broken off a whole: Das Glas zerbrach in viele Stücke.^[11][1]
2. A portion or section forming a unit of a whole, also a stretch of way: zwei Stück Torte;^[11] jemanden ein Stück begleiten.^[11]
3. A quantity of a material forming a whole in its usual trade form: ein Stück Seife.^[11]
4. A single item, animal or plant counted among others of its kind, often untranslated: zehn Stück Vieh; also a fine specimen.^[11][1]
5. (rare in the plural) A deed or prank: Da hast du dir ja ein Stück geleistet!^[11]
6. (colloquial, derogatory) A person the speaker disapproves of.^[11][1]
7. A play for the stage; a piece of music.^[11][12]
8. (obsolete) A cannon.^[11][1]
9. Short for Stücklohn, piece rate.^[11]

Word family

• stückeln
• zerstückeln
• bestücken
• Stückwerk
• Stückgut
• Stücklohn
• stückweise
• Stückzahl
• Frühstück
• Grundstück
• Kunststück
• Meisterstück

Related words

• Stock
• stoßen
• Stuck

Usage notes

Aus freien Stücken (older von freien Stücken) means “of one's own accord”, and große Stücke auf jemanden halten “to think highly of someone”.^[5] Sich für jemanden in Stücke reißen lassen (colloquial) is to do anything for someone, and nur ein Stück Papier sein is said of something written down that nobody is bound to keep.^[11] Stuck “stucco” is a doublet, borrowed through Italian.^[1][4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 20, 197
3. ^ a b c d e f 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 Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 894
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o 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 e f g h i Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag, p. 835
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. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
10. ^ Lehnwortportal Deutsch (2012–), Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim, lwp.ids-mannheim.de
11. ^ 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
12. ^ Wiktionary, das freie Wörterbuch (German Wiktionary), de.wiktionary.org