Etymologically
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Wohnung

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Pronunciation

  • /ˈvoːnʊŋ/[1]

Forms

Wohnung f (genitive Wohnung, plural Wohnungen)[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German wonunge (“dwelling, abode; region; habit”), inherited from Old High German wonunga (“dwelling”), a noun formed with -unga from the verb wonēn (“to dwell, stay”), the ancestor of wohnen.[2][3][1] The same formation is Middle Low German woninge and Dutch woning (“house, dwelling”).[4][1]

The verb is Proto-Germanic *wunāną, found also in Old Saxon wonon, Old English wunian (“to dwell, remain”) and Old Frisian wonia.[3][2][5] Beside it stand Old Norse una (“to be content”) and Gothic 𐌿𐌽𐍅𐌿𐌽𐌰𐌽𐌳𐍃 (unwunands, “troubled, unhappy”), so that “to be content” can be taken as the common starting point; with ablaut, gewöhnen and gewohnt belong here.[3][5][2] Kluge and Pfeifer connect the whole group with gewinnen and Wonne and the root Proto-Indo-European *wenh₁- (“to strive, wish, love”), so that the meaning would have gone from “to like, be pleased” by way of “to be used to” to “to stay at a familiar place”.[3][2][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German wonunga is found in the Tatian (about 830) and in glosses, meaning “dwelling, abode, stay”.[7][8] The Grimms' dictionary knows only a single Old High German example, in the Tatian.[4] Otfrid uses a different formation, woni.[9]

Semantic evolution

In Middle High German wonunge meant staying or residence, but also a region or climate, as when Konrad von Megenberg says a tree does not grow in unserr wonung, in our part of the world, and in law books also “habit”.[10][11] The abstract sense, the act of living or staying somewhere, was the commoner one in the older language, while the concrete sense, a dwelling, prevails in New High German.[4]

Adelung (1793) distinguishes three senses: a permanent stay at a place, the place one lives in (houses, palaces, huts, caves), and, in a narrower sense, the part of a building in which one family lives, so that a house may have four Wohnungen.[9] The last is the main sense today.[11][1]

Timeline

  • c. 830 – The Old High German Tatian uses wonunga.[7][4]
  • 1346 – A pilgrim's account speaks of the 40 years' wonung of the Israelites in the desert.[4]
  • 1598 – A Latin dictionary renders commoratio as wohnung, verharrung ein zeitlang, a stay for a time.[4]
  • 1793 – Adelung records the sense “part of a building where one family lives”.[9]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A flat or apartment: a set of rooms in a building, closed off from the rest, where a person or household lives: Ihre neue Wohnung liegt im vierten Stock.[11][1]
  2. A place to live in general, lodging, accommodation: Die Erntehelfer bekamen Verpflegung und Wohnung.[11][1]

Word family

  • wohnungslos
  • Wohnungssuche
  • wohnen
  • gewohnt
  • gewöhnen
  • Wonne
  • Dutch woning

Usage notes

Wohnung nehmen “to take up quarters” is elevated and dated.[11]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
  3. ^ a b c d Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 994
  4. ^ 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. 30, 1230
  5. ^ a b Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  6. ^ Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2007), 4th ed., Duden vol. 7, 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. 399
  9. ^ a b c Adelung, Johann Christoph (1793–1801), Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart, 2nd ed., 4 vols., Leipzig: Breitkopf
  10. ^ Lexer, Matthias (1872–1878), Mittelhochdeutsches Handwörterbuch, 3 vols., Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 3, 976
  11. ^ a b c d e Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag