Etymologically
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acht

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Pronunciation

  • /axt/, [ʔäχtʰ][1]

Forms

acht (invariable; inflected achten after a preposition with no noun following)[1][2] The ordinal achte once had a syllable more: Middle High German ahtede, Old High German ahtodo.[3] The long form was shortened from Middle High German times and died out in the 16th century.[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German aht, inherited from Old High German ahto, inherited from Proto-West Germanic *ahtō, inherited from Proto-Germanic *ahtōu (“eight”).[3][1][4] The number is found in every Germanic language: Gothic 𐌰𐌷𐍄𐌰𐌿 (ahtau), Old Norse átta, Old English eahta, Old Frisian achta and Old Saxon ahto, and today Dutch acht, English eight and Swedish åtta.[3][5][4]

It continues Proto-Indo-European *oḱtṓw (“eight”), also in Sanskrit अष्टौ (aṣṭáu), Ancient Greek ὀκτώ (oktṓ), Latin octō, Lithuanian aštuonì and Old Irish ocht.[3][6][5] Old Church Slavonic осмь (osmĭ) was reshaped after the ordinal.[3][6] The ending of the Indo-European word looks like a dual, “twice four”, which points to an old count by fours.[3][6][7] Kroonen, Kluge and Pfeifer mention the proposal that it is the dual of a word seen in Avestan ašti- (“width of four fingers”), so that eight was the width of two hands without the thumbs, though the meaning of the Avestan word is not certain.[5][3][6] Other links, with the root Proto-Indo-European *oḱ- (“sharp”) (the four fingertips) or with the word for four, remain uncertain.[6][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German ahto is recorded in the 8th century, in the glosses and then in Tatian, Otfrid and Notker; the Grimms' revision quotes dies VIII taga from an 8th-century gloss on Luke 2:21.[3][8][7] Old High German still inflected it, as in Notker's ahtouuiu and ahtouuen.[4][7]

Semantic evolution

The numeral long ago stopped inflecting before a noun, but forms with a dative ending survive when no noun follows: Adelung in 1774 records er fährt mit achten “he drives with eight horses”.[2][7] Acht Tage has meant “a week” since Middle High German, because the day of the week was counted at both ends, as also in Latin.[9]

Timeline

  • 8th century – Old High German ahto appears in glosses.[3][7]
  • 9th century – The ordinal ahtodo and the compound ahtozehan “eighteen” are recorded.[6]
  • 1451 – Achtel “eighth part” is recorded.[9]
  • 16th century – The three-syllable ordinal dies out.[3]

Meanings

Numeral

  1. Eight, the number 8.[10][1]
  2. Eight o'clock, or eight years of age.[10][11]

Word family

  • achte
  • Achtel
  • achtzehn
  • achtzig

Usage notes

The noun die Acht (the figure 8, a playing card, a figure-of-eight) is the numeral used as a noun.[1][10] In older spelling the phrases sich in acht nehmen “to be careful” and außer acht lassen “to disregard” were written lowercase, but they contain a different word, the old noun Acht “attention”, not the numeral.[9][12]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e 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. 1, 164
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 13
  4. ^ a b c Lloyd, Albert L.; Springer, Otto; Lühr, Rosemarie, et al. (1988–), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; online ewa.saw-leipzig.de, p. 1, 121
  5. ^ a b c Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  6. ^ 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
  7. ^ a b c d e Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm, Neubearbeitung (1965–2018), ed. Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften and Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, 9 vols. (A–F), Leipzig / Stuttgart: Hirzel, p. 1, 1365
  8. ^ Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 30
  9. ^ a b c 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 c Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
  11. ^ Wiktionary, das freie Wörterbuch (German Wiktionary), de.wiktionary.org
  12. ^ Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag, p. 79