drohen

Forms

drohen (third-person singular present droht, past tense drohte, past participle gedroht, auxiliary haben)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German drōn, inherited from Old High German drouwen (“to threaten, rebuke”), inherited from Proto-West Germanic *þrawjan (“to threaten”).^[2][3][4] The modern form goes back to a contracted by-form of dröuwen, shaped by the noun drō (“threat”); the regular outcome is dräuen, now archaic.^[2][3][5] The ⟨h⟩ only marks the long vowel.^[3]

Related West Germanic verbs are Old Saxon githrōon, Middle Low German drouwen, Old Frisian thrūwan and Old English þrēagan (“to rebuke, punish, threaten”) beside þrēan.^[3][2] Kroonen derives the verb from the noun seen in Old Norse þrá (“longing”) and Old English þrēa (“rebuke, threat, punishment”), reconstructing Proto-Indo-European *trouH- and comparing Lithuanian trivóti (“to endure”).^[6]

Kluge, Pfeifer and Duden place it under Proto-Indo-European *treu- (“to push, press, oppress”), beside Ancient Greek τρύω (trúō, “I wear out, exhaust”), with a development from “rub, crush” to “press hard, threaten”;^[2][3][5] Pfeifer also compares Russian травить (travítʹ, “to destroy, hunt”).^[2][3][5] English Threaten belongs to an extension of that root, treated under verdrießen.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German throuwen is recorded from the 8th century and threwen around 800, meaning to threaten and to rebuke;^[3][4] Köbler lists it in glosses from 765, the Benedictine Rule and Notker, with the senses threaten, scold and reprimand.^[3][4] The noun throuwunga “threat” is also of the 8th century.^[3]

Semantic evolution

In Early New High German the verb still had forms with -w- (trauwen, tröuwen), and it covered a threat of punishment by an authority as much as threats of violence and bullying behaviour.^[7][8] Geiler von Kaysersberg distinguished a good threatening, as when a mother dem kind tröwet or a schoolmaster threatens a pupil.^[8] From the 16th century the form drohen pushed back the umlauted dräuen, helped by the old noun drō, which itself went out of use in Early New High German.^[8][7]

Adelung describes the transferred use for things that may cause harm, as a house that threatens to collapse; from it comes the modern sense “to be imminent”, as in es droht Gefahr.^[9][10] Derivatives are Drohung, Drohbrief (early 15th century) and bedrohen (15th century), with Bedrohung from the 16th.^[3]

Timeline

• 8th century – Old High German throuwen is recorded.^[2][3]
• c. 800 – The form threwen is recorded.^[3]
• Early 15th century – Drohbrief “threatening letter”.^[3]
• 15th century – bedrohen appears beside older bedräuen.^[3]
• 1482 – A German–Latin vocabulary lists Drouwen.^[8]
• 16th century – drohen begins to displace dräuen.^[8]

Meanings

Verb

1. To threaten or try to intimidate someone with gestures or words: der Wirt drohte den Jungen mit dem Besen.^[10][1]
2. To announce something unpleasant if one's demands are not met: der Vermieter drohte mit einer Klage.^[10]
3. Of something dangerous, to be imminent, to loom: der Stadt droht ein Hochwasser.^[10][1]
4. To be in danger of doing something: das alte Dach drohte einzustürzen.^[10][1]

Word family

• bedrohen
• Drohbrief
• Drohung
• androhen
• Drohgebärde

Related words

• dräuen
• verdrießen
• drehen
• English threaten

Usage notes

Adelung records the proverb Wer drohet, der schlägt nicht (“he who threatens does not strike”).^[9] The old form dräuen now appears only in poetic or jocularly old-fashioned style.^[8][3]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 217
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
4. ^ a b c Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
5. ^ a b c Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2014), 5th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin / Mannheim / Zürich: Dudenverlag, p. 233
6. ^ Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
7. ^ a b Anderson, Robert R.; Goebel, Ulrich; Reichmann, Oskar, eds. (1989–), Frühneuhochdeutsches Wörterbuch, Berlin / New York: De Gruyter; FWB-online, fwb-online.de
8. ^ 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
9. ^ a b Adelung, Johann Christoph (1793–1801), Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart, 2nd ed., 4 vols., Leipzig: Breitkopf
10. ^ a b c d e Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag