Etymologically
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Tat

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Pronunciation

  • /taːt/, [tʰäːtʰ][1]

Forms

Tat f (genitive Tat, plural Taten)[1] The older spelling was That.[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German tāt, inherited from Old High German tāt, inherited from Proto-West Germanic *dādi, inherited from Proto-Germanic *dēdiz (“deed”).[2][3][1] The same word is Old Saxon dād, Gothic 𐌲𐌰𐌳𐌴𐌸𐍃 (gadēþs), Old Norse dáð, Old English dǣd and Old Frisian dēd, continued in Dutch daad, English deed and Swedish dåd.[2][3] It is an abstract noun in *-tis to the verb tun, with a different ablaut grade.[2][3]

It continues Proto-Indo-European *dʰéh₁tis (“putting, placing”), from the root Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁- (“to put, place, do”).[1][3] Close relatives outside Germanic are Lithuanian dė́tis (“load, freight”) and Old Church Slavonic благодѣть (blagodětĭ, “grace, benefaction”), and the form with the reduced vowel is continued in Ancient Greek θέσις (thésis, “placing; proposition”) and Latin conditiō (“founding, creation”).[3][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German tāt is recorded from 765 in glosses, and is frequent in the Benedictine Rule, the Muspilli, the Tatian, Otfrid and Notker; besides “deed, act” it meant “doing, working”, “event”, “reality” and even “thing, being”.[5][6] Old Saxon dād appears in the Heliand.[2]

Semantic evolution

As the opposite of Wort “word”, Tat “deed” is already Old High German, and Middle High German joined it with Rat in mit Rat und Tat “with advice and help”.[7] Two lines of Goethe's Faust have become proverbial: Am Anfang war die Tat (“In the beginning was the deed”) and Der Worte sind genug gewechselt, / Laßt mich auch endlich Taten sehn! (“Enough words have been exchanged, now let me see deeds at last”).[7] The adverbial in der Tat “indeed” dates from the 16th century.[7]

The sense “crime” is old too: the Early New High German dictionary has it, and Maaler (1561) gives ein Thaat vertuschen “to hush up a deed”; from it come auf frischer Tat “in the act” (Hans Sachs) and compounds of law such as Tatbestand and Tatverdacht.[8][7] Täter existed only in compounds such as übeltæter in Middle High German and stands alone from the 15th century.[4][3] Tatsache was coined in 1756 by the theologian Spalding after English matter of fact, itself a rendering of Latin rēs factī.[3][7]

Timeline

  • 765 – Old High German tāt appears in glosses.[5]
  • 15th century – Täter “perpetrator” is first used as a word of its own.[3][4]
  • 16th century – First record of in der Tat “indeed”.[7]
  • 1561 – Maaler records the sense “crime”.[7]
  • 1756 – Spalding coins Tatsache after English matter of fact.[3][7]

Meanings

Noun

  1. Something someone does or has done, a deed, an act: eine mutige Tat, einen Plan in die Tat umsetzen “to put a plan into action”, ein Mann der Tat “a man of action”.[9][1]
  2. An offence, a crime: Der Angeklagte hat die Tat gestanden. jemanden auf frischer Tat ertappen, to catch someone in the act.[9][1]
  3. in der Tat, indeed, really: Das ist in der Tat ein Problem.[9]

Word family

  • Täter
  • tätig
  • tätlich
  • Tatsache
  • tatsächlich
  • Tatkraft
  • Missetat
  • Wohltat
  • Untat
  • tun
  • These
  • English deed

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 908
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
  4. ^ a b c Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag
  5. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
  6. ^ Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 329
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
  8. ^ Anderson, Robert R.; Goebel, Ulrich; Reichmann, Oskar, eds. (1989–), Frühneuhochdeutsches Wörterbuch, Berlin / New York: De Gruyter; FWB-online, fwb-online.de
  9. ^ a b c Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag