Etymologically
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fast

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Pronunciation

  • /fast/, /faʃt/[1]

Forms

fast (adverb, not comparable)[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German vaste, inherited from Old High German fasto (“firmly, securely; very”), inherited from Proto-West Germanic *fastō, the adverb without umlaut that belongs to the adjective fest.[2][3][4][1] It corresponds to Old Saxon fasto, Middle Low German vaste, Middle Dutch vaste and Old English fæste, and to English fast, whose sense in English became “quickly”.[3][1]

The adjective goes back to Proto-Germanic *fastuz (“firm, fixed”), seen in Old Norse fastr, Old English fæst and Dutch vast.[5][6][1] Kroonen and Orel connect it with Old Armenian հաստ (hast, “firm”);[6][5] Orel derives it from a form meaning “standing firm”, built on the root Proto-Indo-European *steh₂- (“to stand”), and Kroonen from a compound of Proto-Indo-European *peh₂ǵ- (“to become firm”) and that root.[6][5] The older comparison with Sanskrit पस्त्य (pastyà, “homestead”) is rejected by Kroonen.[5][1]

The adverb was formed with the ending /-o/, which did not cause umlaut, while the adjective had an ending with /i/, which did.[7][8] Most such pairs were later levelled to the umlauted form, but the old adverb survived in this word and in schon because their meanings had moved away from those of the umlauted adjectives.[7][8][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German fasto is first recorded in glosses at the end of the 8th century, translating Latin tenere “dearly”, and then in Otfrid, Notker and the Physiologus, meaning “firmly, strictly, securely, steadfastly” and “very”.[9][10][11] Otfrid writes of Judas er iz fasto gihiaz “he firmly promised it”.[11]

Semantic evolution

In Middle High German vaste meant “firmly, closely; near; strongly, very”.[4][3] The intensifying sense “very” was common until the 17th century, and Luther uses it often: Gott ist fast mächtig in der Sammlung der Heiligen.[8] Adelung, around 1800, considered it obsolete in High German, though he noted it in Opitz.[12]

The modern sense “almost” arose in phrases such as fast alle, fast nichts, fast nicht, where a strengthening adds nothing and the word could be taken as a sign of uncertainty; it also appears with numbers, as Luther's weil er fast hundertjährig war.[8][3][4] The change took place in the 16th and 17th centuries, and Georg Henisch still gave both senses side by side; the split between fast and fest is regarded as complete from the second half of the 18th century.[8][11] In this sense fast replaced the older schier.[8]

Timeline

  • Late 8th century – Old High German fasto appears in glosses.[9][11]
  • 863–871 – Otfrid uses fasto “firmly”.[11]
  • 16th century – fast is used with numbers and negations in the sense “nearly”.[3]
  • 16th–17th century – The sense shifts from “very” to “almost”.[8][11]
  • Second half of the 18th century – The separation of fast from the adjective fest is complete.[11]

Meanings

Adverb

  1. almost, nearly: Der Zug ist fast leer.[13][1]
  2. (with a negative) hardly: fast nie, fast niemand.[1][12]
  3. (obsolete) Very, greatly.[1][8]

Usage notes

The older sense survives in Swiss German dialect in nicht so fast “not so very much”, which Paul still finds in Pestalozzi.[8] With a past subjunctive, fast says that something nearly happened: er wäre fast gestürzt.[8][12]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 279
  3. ^ a b c d e 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 d Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag, p. 257
  5. ^ a b c d Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  6. ^ a b c Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  7. ^ a b Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 3, 1348
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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 Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
  10. ^ Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 97
  11. ^ a b c d e f g 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. 9, 187
  12. ^ a b c Adelung, Johann Christoph (1793–1801), Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart, 2nd ed., 4 vols., Leipzig: Breitkopf
  13. ^ Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag