feiern

Forms

feiern (third-person singular present feiert, past tense feierte, past participle gefeiert, auxiliary haben)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German vīren, inherited from Old High German fīrōn, a verb formed from the noun fīra (“feast, rest”), now Feier.^[2][1][3] That noun is borrowed from Late Latin fēria (“feast day”), a singular made in Late Latin from the plural fēriae (“days of rest, holidays”), which also gave Ferien.^[4][2][5]

Pfeifer and the Duden hold that the verb was modelled on the Medieval Latin verb for “to celebrate, rest”,^[2][5] but the EWA notes that an active Latin verb of this kind is hardly attested and that a copy would be expected to take another form, so it treats the verb as formed in German from the noun.^[3] The vowel /iː/ for Latin /eː/ is unusual: Kluge, following Bammesberger, and the EWA, following Weisgerber, explain it by Irish mediation, since Latin /eː/ appears as /iː/ in Celtic.^[4][6] The Latin plural belongs to the language of religion and is related to fēstus (“festive”) and fānum (“temple”).^[5][6]

The same verb is Old Saxon fīrion, Old Frisian fīria and Dutch vieren, and the Scandinavian verbs were borrowed from Middle Low German.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German fīrōn is found from about 800 in glosses, then in the Tatian, Otfrid and Notker, meaning “to celebrate, keep a feast”, but also “to rest, be idle, be free of something”.^[7][3][8] The Tatian (about 830) uses it of priests who in sambaztag ni uiront “do not keep the Sabbath” in the temple.^[9]

Semantic evolution

The verb first referred to keeping a church feast, and its object could be the time kept (Luther: solt jn feiren dem HERRN zum Fest, Exodus 12:14) or the occasion, as a wedding or a hero.^[10] From this came the sense “to honour, praise”, and in the participle gefeiert “acclaimed, successful”.^[10][11]

Like Latin fēriae, the medieval noun also meant “rest from work”.^[10] The noun lost this sense, which passed in part to Ferien, borrowed in the 16th century, but the intransitive verb kept it: “the workshops were idle” (Thomas Mann).^[10] Today this survives as a colloquial sense “to be laid off, have no work”, as in krankfeiern.^[11] In recent youth slang the verb also means “to love, be thrilled by” something.^[1]

Timeline

• c. 800 – Old High German fīrōn is first recorded, in glosses.^[7][2]
• c. 830 – The Tatian uses it of keeping the Sabbath.^[9]
• 1534 – Luther's Bible: feiren dem HERRN zum Fest.^[10]
• 16th century – Ferien is borrowed, taking over the sense “rest from work” from the noun Feier.^[10]

Meanings

Verb

1. To celebrate a festival or occasion: to hold a birthday, wedding or Christmas as a feast; also to celebrate a church service.^[11][1]
2. Of a person or team: to have, enjoy (a success): ein Comeback feiern, einen Sieg feiern.^[11][1]
3. To party, be merry together: Die Studenten feierten bis zum Morgen.^[11][1]
4. To acclaim, honour someone (as something): Man feierte den Torwart als Helden;^[11] (formal) to praise in verse.^[11]
5. (colloquial) To be off work, usually against one's will.^[11]
6. (colloquial, youth slang) To love, adore something.^[1]

Word family

• krankfeiern
• abfeiern

Related words

• Feier
• Feierabend
• Feiertag
• feierlich
• Ferien
• Fest

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d 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 Lloyd, Albert L.; Springer, Otto; Lühr, Rosemarie, et al. (1988–), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; online ewa.saw-leipzig.de, p. 3, 303
4. ^ a b Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 284
5. ^ a b c Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2007), 4th ed., Duden vol. 7, Mannheim: Dudenverlag
6. ^ a b Lloyd, Albert L.; Springer, Otto; Lühr, Rosemarie, et al. (1988–), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; online ewa.saw-leipzig.de, p. 3, 304
7. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
8. ^ Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 104
9. ^ a b 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, 264
10. ^ 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
11. ^ a b c d e f g h Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag