Tag

Forms

Tag m (genitive Tages or Tags, plural Tage, diminutive Tägchen n or Täglein n)^[1] An umlauted plural Täge has been found since the 14th century and survives in dialects.^[2] A weak genitive plural tagen occurs occasionally until the 18th century, as in Luther's nach der zal der vierzig tagen.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German tac, inherited from Old High German tag, inherited from Proto-West Germanic *dag, inherited from Proto-Germanic *dagaz (“day”).^[3][1][4] The same word is Gothic 𐌳𐌰𐌲𐍃 (dags), Old Norse dagr, Old English dæg, Old Frisian dei and Old Saxon dag, and today Dutch dag, English day, Swedish dag and Icelandic dagur.^[3][4][5] A related form with a long vowel appears in dōgor (“day”), dœgr (“half-day of twelve hours”) and 𐍆𐌹𐌳𐌿𐍂𐌳𐍉𐌲𐍃 (fidurdōgs, “lasting four days”).^[6][4]

Its origin is disputed.^[3][6] Most dictionaries connect it with Proto-Indo-European *dʰegʷʰ- (“to burn”), found in Sanskrit दहति (dáhati, “burns”), Latin foveō (“to warm”), favīlla (“ash”), Lithuanian dègti (“to burn”) and probably Old Church Slavonic жешти (žešti), so that the day would be “the time when the sun burns”.^{[3][5][7][8][2]} Kluge points out that the sound changes are not fully explained,^[3] and Wiktionary notes that the loss of the labial element would be irregular.^[1] If the comparison holds, the Germanic word first meant the hot, bright part of the day, as dãgas (“summer heat”) suggests, or else the dawn.^[3]

Pfeifer prefers to connect it with Sanskrit अहर् (áhar, “day”), whose r-, n- and s-stems he also finds in the related forms with a long vowel, such as dœgn, and to explain the initial dental by the influence of a Germanic word for the warm time of day.^[6] Kroonen sets up a root Proto-Indo-European *dʰeǵʰ- (“day”) behind both the Germanic and the Sanskrit words, with an irregular loss of the first consonant in Sanskrit.^[1][4] Hamp, quoted by Kluge, also derives the Germanic word from the root of the Sanskrit word, with the dental taken over from a preceding pronoun.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German tag is recorded from the 8th century, first in glosses of about 765.^[3][9] It meant “day, time”, and Schützeichel lists phrases such as tages “by day” and then tag leiten “to spend the day”.^[10] In early times the word named only the span from sunrise to sunset, and the day of 24 hours came later.^[3][7] Tages inti nahtes “by day and by night” is also recorded in the 8th century.^[6]

Semantic evolution

From Middle High German onward Tag was a legal term for an appointed day, a court session or an assembly, often the day of the Thing.^[3][6] This sense lives on in compounds such as Landtag and Reichstag and in the verb tagen.^[6][7] The meaning “to hold a session” arose in the 14th century in the legal language of the western Upper German area, survived in Switzerland, and entered the literary language when Schiller used it in Wilhelm Tell (1804).^[6] vertagen was revived at the end of the 19th century in parliamentary language to replace French ajourner.^[7]

As “daylight” the word also came to mean the surface of the earth in miners' language, as opposed to the depth of the pit: über Tage, unter Tage, recorded by Adelung in 1780.^[11][12] The greeting guten Tag goes back to Middle High German, and its short colloquial form is Tag!.^[11][1] Proverbs include Man soll den Tag nicht vor dem Abend loben, already Middle High German, and Es ist noch nicht aller Tage Abend, found in Fischart.^[11][12]

Compounds with Tage- keep the old stem vowel: Tagebuch (17th century) replaced Latin diurnum and Journal, first among merchants, Tagedieb “idler” is from the end of the 17th century, and Tageblatt was coined in the 19th century for Journal.^[7][6] The compounds Bundestag, Landtag and Parteitag have been borrowed into Modern Hebrew.^[13]

Timeline

• c. 765 – Old High German tag appears in glosses.^[9][3]
• 8th century – tages inti nahtes “by day and by night” is recorded.^[6]
• 1060–1065 – Middle High German tac appears in Williram's commentary on the Song of Songs.^[14]
• 14th century – tagen “to hold a session” arises in western Upper German legal language.^[6][7]
• 14th century – The umlauted plural Täge appears.^[2]
• 17th century – Tagebuch is formed.^[7]
• 1780 – Adelung records the miners' über Tage and unter Tage.^[11]
• 1804 – Schiller's Wilhelm Tell brings tagen “to hold a session” into the literary language.^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. day, daylight: the time between sunrise and sunset: es wird Tag.^[12][1]
2. A day of 24 hours, from midnight to midnight; also the rotation period of a planet.^[12][1]
3. (figurative) Light, open view, in phrases such as an den Tag kommen “come to light” and an den Tag legen “display”.^[12][1]
4. The part of a day spent at work or school.^[1]
5. (mining) The surface of the earth: über Tage, unter Tage.^[12][15]
6. (dated) An assembly, a congress; now chiefly in compounds such as Bundestag and Parteitag.^[1][15]
7. (colloquial, plural) menstruation.^[15]

Interjection

1. (colloquial) Hello, good day, short for guten Tag.^[1][12]

Word family

• tagen
• täglich
• tags
• tagsüber
• betagt
• vertagen
• Tagung
• Tagebuch
• Tagebau
• Tageblatt
• Tagedieb
• Tagelöhner
• Tageszeitung
• Tagtraum
• Mittag
• Landtag
• Reichstag
• Teiding

Related words

• English day

Usage notes

The English word tag has been borrowed separately as Tag /tɛk/, neuter, plural Tags: a markup element in computing and a graffiti artist's signature.^[16][1][15] Tag und Nacht means “all the time”, and ein Unterschied wie Tag und Nacht is a glaring difference.^[12]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 21, 27
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 904
4. ^ a b c d Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
5. ^ a b Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
7. ^ a b c d e f g Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag, p. 846
8. ^ Wahrig-Burfeind, Renate, ed., Wahrig Herkunftswörterbuch, Gütersloh / München: Wissen Media Verlag; online edition at wissen.de
9. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
10. ^ Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 328
11. ^ a b c d Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
12. ^ a b c d e f g h Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
13. ^ Lehnwortportal Deutsch (2012–), Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim, lwp.ids-mannheim.de
14. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
15. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, das freie Wörterbuch (German Wiktionary), de.wiktionary.org
16. ^ Duden. Das Fremdwörterbuch (2007), 9th ed., Duden vol. 5, Mannheim: Dudenverlag