Etymologically
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Zuschauer

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Pronunciation

  • /ˈt͡suːˌʃaʊ̯ɐ/[1]

Forms

Zuschauer m (genitive Zuschauers, plural Zuschauer, feminine Zuschauerin)[1]

Etymology

It is from German zuschauen + -er, formed in the 16th century.[2][3][4] The Duden dictionary suggests that it was modelled on Latin spectātor (“onlooker”).[5]

The verb zuschauen is zu and schauen, from Middle High German schouwen, Old High German scouwōn, Proto-Germanic *skawwōną (“to look”).[6][2][1] The same verb is Old Saxon skawon, Old Frisian skāwia and Old English scēawian, the source of English show.[6][2] Outside Germanic, Kluge compares Ancient Greek θυοσκόος (thuoskóos, “priest who observes sacrifices”) and, without the initial /s/, κοέω (koéō, “I perceive”) and Latin caveō (“to beware”).[6] Pfeifer traces the family to Proto-Indo-European *skeu-, a variant of *keu- (“to heed, look”), also the root of hören.[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The word is recorded from the 16th century.[2][3] The Grimms take its use for the audience at a play to be the oldest: Boltz's translation of Terence addresses the zschawer, the spectators.[3]

Semantic evolution

In the 17th and 18th centuries it is used of the audience at the theatre (Harsdörffer, Kramer, Goethe) and of any onlooker, as when Lohenstein (1690) writes of two people who deserved the whole world as Zuschauer of their virtue.[3] Adelung found the noun far more common than the verb zuschauen, while Zuseher was not current.[7] With film and television it came to mean the viewer of a broadcast, as in Fernsehzuschauer, and in the plural the audience.[1][4]

Timeline

  • 16th century – First records, with Boltz's Terence translation and Musculus.[3][2]
  • 1587 – The Buch der Liebe speaks of crowds of zuschauer.[3]
  • 1690 – Lohenstein's Arminius uses the word figuratively.[3]
  • 1740 – Breitinger writes of the ability of the Zuschauer of a painting.[3]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A spectator, onlooker: someone who watches an event, especially a performance or a game: Mehr als zwanzigtausend Zuschauer verfolgten das Rennen.[5][1]
  2. A viewer of a film or a television broadcast.[1][4]
  3. (in the plural) The audience.[1]

Word family

  • Zuschauerin
  • Fernsehzuschauer
  • Zuschauerraum

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f 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 e f g h Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 32, 789
  4. ^ a b c Wiktionary, das freie Wörterbuch (German Wiktionary), de.wiktionary.org
  5. ^ a b Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
  6. ^ a b c Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 797
  7. ^ Adelung, Johann Christoph (1793–1801), Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart, 2nd ed., 4 vols., Leipzig: Breitkopf