Etymologically
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Volk

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Pronunciation

Forms

Volk n (genitive Volkes or Volks, plural Völker, diminutive Völkchen n or Völklein n)[1] Older New High German still had the unchanged plural, as in Luther's zwey volck sind in deinem leibe (“two nations are in thy womb”, Genesis 25:23).[2] The plural Völker then became general.[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German volc, inherited from Old High German folc, inherited from Proto-West Germanic *folk, inherited from Proto-Germanic *fulką (“troop, army; people”).[3][4][1][5] The same word is Old Saxon folk, Old English folc, Old Frisian folk, Old Norse folk, Dutch volk and English folk.[3][5] Gothic has no such noun, but East Germanic personal names such as the Visigothic Fulgaredus imply it, and Old French folc comes from Frankish.[5]

Kluge finds no exact comparison outside Germanic.[3] It is probably an extension of the root of voll and viel, Proto-Indo-European *pelh₁- (“to fill”), with the sense “multitude”, as in Latin populus (“people”), plēbs (“common people”) and Ancient Greek πλῆθος (plêthos, “crowd, multitude”).[3][4][6][1] Pfeifer and the Duden take “band of warriors, host” as one of its oldest senses: the men able to bear arms representing the community.[4][7] The Slavic word for a troop, Old Church Slavonic плъкъ (plŭkŭ, “army division”), is a borrowing from Germanic, and Pulk came back from Slavic.[1][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German folc is recorded from the 8th century in glosses and then in the Hildebrandslied, Isidor, the Strasbourg Oaths, Tatian, Otfrid and Notker.[5][8] It meant “people, tribe, population, crowd” and also “troop, army”, glossing Latin populus, plebs, turba, cohors and legio.[5]

Semantic evolution

The military sense lived on for a long time: Schiller writes of die schott'schen Völker (“the Scottish troops”), and it survives in Fußvolk and Kriegsvolk.[9][7] From Old High German on the word also meant a crowd, as in Luther's folgete jm viel Volcks nach (“many people followed him”, Matthew 8:1),[9] and early on the mass of the population as against its upper ranks.[7]

The sense “nation, a community joined by language, culture and history” took shape with the national consciousness of the humanist age;[7][4] Romanticism gave it an emotional tone, seen in Volkslied, coined by Herder in 1773 after English popular song, and in Volkstum.[7][4] The National Socialists made it a central racist term, and völkisch took on the sense “belonging to the people as a supposed race”.[7][9] Hunters speak of ein Volk Rebhühner (“a covey of partridges”), and beekeepers of a colony as a Volk.[10][1] English borrowed Völkerwanderung in 1855 and völkisch in 1939.[11]

Timeline

  • 8th century – Old High German folc appears in glosses.[5][3]
  • Late 15th century – The adjective volckisch is recorded.[4]
  • 1645 – Zesen uses Völkerrecht “international law”.[9]
  • Early 18th century – Völkerwanderung is formed, after Latin migratio gentium.[9]
  • 1773 – Herder coins Volkslied.[4]
  • 1806 – Volkskunde appears in the circle of Des Knaben Wunderhorn.[9]
  • c. 1830 – Volkswirtschaft is formed after English national economy.[4]
  • 1855 – English borrows Völkerwanderung.[11]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A people, nation: a large community joined by culture, history and often language: die Völker Südamerikas.[12][1]
  2. (no plural) The population of a country as a body, the citizens: Das Volk wählt das Parlament.[12][1]
  3. (no plural, dated) The common people, the lower classes: Sie stammte aus dem einfachen Volk.[12][1]
  4. (no plural, colloquial) A crowd, people gathered somewhere: Auf dem Marktplatz war viel Volk unterwegs.[12][1]
  5. (biology, hunting) A colony of bees, a covey of partridges.[1][10]

Word family

  • bevölkern
  • Bevölkerung
  • völkisch
  • Völkchen
  • Volkslied
  • Volkstum
  • volkstümlich
  • Volkskunde
  • Völkerwanderung
  • Völkerrecht
  • Volkswirtschaft
  • Fußvolk

Usage notes

Im Namen des Volkes (“in the name of the people”) is the formula with which German courts pronounce judgement.[12] Das Volk der Dichter und Denker, said of the Germans, goes back to Musäus, who wrote of the Germans as an enthusiastic people of thinkers and poets in the preface to his Volksmärchen der Deutschen (1782–1786).[12]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 26, 453
  3. ^ a b c d e f Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 962
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h 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 Lloyd, Albert L.; Springer, Otto; Lühr, Rosemarie, et al. (1988–), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; online ewa.saw-leipzig.de, p. 3, 451
  6. ^ Wahrig-Burfeind, Renate, ed., Wahrig Herkunftswörterbuch, Gütersloh / München: Wissen Media Verlag; online edition at wissen.de
  7. ^ a b c d e f Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag
  8. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
  9. ^ 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
  10. ^ a b Adelung, Johann Christoph (1793–1801), Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart, 2nd ed., 4 vols., Leipzig: Breitkopf
  11. ^ a b Lehnwortportal Deutsch (2012–), Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim, lwp.ids-mannheim.de
  12. ^ a b c d e f Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag