dauern

Forms

dauern (third-person singular present dauert, past tense dauerte, past participle gedauert, auxiliary haben)^[1] The older form dauren prevailed until after 1750 and disappeared from writing soon after 1800, though it lives on in dialects.^[2] Forms with t- (tauren) retreated from the 16th century and died out in the first half of the 18th.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German dūren (also tūren), borrowed from Middle Low German dūren, from Latin dūrō (“to harden; to last, endure”), from dūrus (“hard”).^[3][4][1] The Latin verb was taken first into Middle Low German and Middle Dutch dūren, as also into Old Frisian dūria, and the word spread southwards into High German from the 12th century, where it competed with native wern, the modern währen.^[3][4][2] French durer comes from the same Latin verb, and English dure from French.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest record is in the Rede vom Glauben of Der arme Hartmann (before 1150, in a manuscript of about 1187).^[2] The first sense was “to hold out, persist, withstand”: Wolfram says of a knight that he wol in strîte tûren kan “can well hold out in battle”.^[5][6]

Semantic evolution

The word stayed rare in Middle High German, was avoided by Walther, Hartmann and Gottfried, and Luther does not use it.^[5] Until the 15th century it was at home mainly in Low and western Central German; after 1550 it gained ground and in the 17th century became general, and in common use only in the 18th.^[2][4] The sense “to last for a certain time”, found already in Middle High German, has dominated since about 1700; the older “to hold out” still occurs in Lessing.^[4][7]

The noun Dauer, rare in Middle High German, reappears in the second half of the 17th century, at first meaning “durability”, then “duration”.^[4] dauerhaft dates from the 16th century and the participle dauernd “constant” from the first half of the 18th.^[4] Dauerbrenner, a kind of stove, was used figuratively from about 1920 for something that stays popular, and Dauerlauf as a sport goes back to Jahn and Eiselen (1816).^[7]

Timeline

• c. 1150 – First record, in Der arme Hartmann.^[2]
• Early 13th century – Wolfram uses tûren “to hold out”.^[5]
• 16th century – dauerhaft appears; the spelling dauern with metathesis begins.^[4][2]
• After 1550 – The verb spreads and becomes general in the 17th century.^[2]
• Second half of the 17th century – The noun Dauer comes back into use.^[4]
• About 1700 – The sense “to last a certain time” becomes the dominant one.^[4]
• 1816 – Dauerlauf in Jahn and Eiselen's Deutsche Turnkunst.^[7]

Meanings

Verb

1. To last, to take a certain time: Die Reparatur dauert drei Tage.^[8][1]
2. (formal) To endure, to remain unchanged: Ihr Ruhm wird nicht dauern.^[8][1]
3. (colloquial, impersonal) To take a while: Bei der Behörde dauert es wieder.^[8][1]
4. (dated) To hold out, to persevere.^[8][7]

Word family

• Dauer
• dauerhaft
• dauernd
• andauern
• ausdauern
• fortdauern
• Dauerbrenner
• Dauerlauf

Related words

• währen
• English endure
• French durer

Usage notes

A second verb of the same spelling, tūren “to grieve, to arouse pity”, survives in formal or archaic use: er dauert mich “I feel sorry for him”, and is the base of bedauern.^[3][9] Duden and Paul connect it with teuer, from an original “to seem too dear, too costly” (of money or effort spent in vain), whence “to regret” and then “to pity”;^[9][7][3] Kluge objects that the sounds do not allow this without unproven extra steps and calls its origin unclear.^[9][7][3] The revised Grimm puts it in an ablaut relation to teuer but of uncertain origin; the sense “it is too costly for me” died out around the middle of the 19th century.^[10]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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. 6, 397
3. ^ a b c d e Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 182
4. ^ 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
5. ^ a b c Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 2, 840
6. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
7. ^ 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
8. ^ a b c d Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
9. ^ a b c Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag, p. 191
10. ^ 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. 6, 403