gehören

Forms

gehören (third-person singular present gehört, past tense gehörte, past participle gehört, auxiliary haben)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German gehœren, inherited from Old High German gihōren (“to hear, obey”), inherited from Proto-West Germanic *gahauʀijan, inherited from Proto-Germanic *gahauzijaną (“to listen, hear”), formed with the prefix Proto-Germanic *ga- from the verb that became hören.^[1][2][3] The same verb is Old Saxon gihōrian, Middle Low German gehōren, Old English ġehīeran and Gothic 𐌲𐌰𐌷𐌰𐌿𐍃𐌾𐌰𐌽 (gahausjan).^[2][1][4] Kluge describes it as an intensive form of the simple verb, widely used in the old language;^[3] in the modern verb the prefix keeps its force while the sense of the simple verb has faded.^[5][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German gihōren is common from the 8th century, from the glosses of about 765 and the Hildebrandslied on.^[3][7] It meant “to hear, perceive, listen to, obey, grant”, as in the Hildebrandslied's ik gihôrta ðat seggen (“I heard it said”).^[8][4]

Semantic evolution

Middle High German gehœren still had the senses of the simple verb, “to hear”, “to listen, obey”.^[2] The modern meaning grew out of “to listen to someone”, that is “to be his”: it applied first to persons and was then extended to things.^[3] Pfeifer dates the senses of belonging to a family and of ownership to the 14th century, and derives “to be due, to befit” from the legal claim to property;^[2] from this comes reflexive sich gehören “to be proper”.^[2][5] The old sense “to hear” lived on in Upper German, as in Swabian er g'hört nicht wol “he is hard of hearing”.^[4]

A possessive pronoun could stand for the dative, as in Goethe's Und mein gehört die ganze Welt, and in southern German gehören with a past participle says what ought to be done.^[5][9] The adjective gehörig, Old High German gihōrīg “obedient”, came to match the verb in the 15th century and is now mostly an intensifier, “thorough, proper”.^[5][6]

Timeline

• 8th century – Old High German gihōren is recorded in glosses and the Hildebrandslied.^[3][7]
• 14th century – gehören comes to express belonging and ownership.^[2]
• 1486 – gehörig is used in the sense “belonging”.^[5]
• 15th century – angehörig “belonging to” appears.^[2]
• 16th–18th century – Angehörige “relatives” comes into use (Pfeifer: 16th century, Duden: 18th century).^[2][6]

Meanings

Verb

1. (with dative) To belong to someone, to be someone's property: der Hund gehört meiner Schwester.^[9][1]
2. (with zu) To be a member or part of a whole: sie gehört zu den besten Spielerinnen.^[9][1]
3. To have its proper place somewhere: die Schuhe gehören nicht auf den Tisch.^[9]
4. (with zu) To be needed for something, to be a prerequisite.^[9][1]
5. (reflexive) To be proper or fitting: das gehört sich nicht.^[9][1]
6. (regional, especially southern) Ought to, with a past participle: der gehört bestraft.^[9][1]

Word family

• angehören
• Angehörige
• zugehören
• zugehörig
• gehörig
• ungehörig
• dazugehören
• hingehören

Related words

• hören
• English hear

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h 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 e Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 341
4. ^ 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. 5, 2504
5. ^ a b c d e Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
6. ^ a b c Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2014), 5th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin / Mannheim / Zürich: Dudenverlag
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. 157
9. ^ a b c d e f g Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag