Etymologically
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grün

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Pronunciation

Forms

grün (strong nominative masculine singular grüner, comparative grüner, superlative am grünsten)[1] Forms without umlaut, such as gruen, were also written in Alemannic in older New High German and survive in dialect nouns for young shoots.[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German grüene, inherited from Old High German gruoni, inherited from Proto-West Germanic *grōnī, inherited from Proto-Germanic *grōniz (“green”).[3][4][1][5] The same adjective is Old Saxon grōni, Middle Low German grȫne, Old Frisian grēne, Old English grēne and Old Norse grœnn, continued in Dutch groen, English green and Swedish grön.[3][4][6] It is found only in West and North Germanic.[4][2]

It is derived with an /n/ suffix from the verb Proto-Germanic *grōaną (“to grow”), strong in gróa and grōwan, the source of English grow, and weak in Old High German gruoen (“to grow, flourish”) and Middle High German grüejen, so its first meaning was “growing”.[3][4][7] That verb was already being displaced in Middle High German by grünen.[7] Duden allows that the adjective may instead first have meant “grass-coloured”.[8] Pfeifer traces the verb to the root Proto-Indo-European *gʰer(ə)- (“to stick out”), used of shoots, bristles and edges, and connects it with Gras, Granne, Grat and Gräte.[4] Kroonen and Wiktionary reconstruct the adjective as *gʰroh₁-nis, from *gʰreh₁- (“to grow, become green”).[6][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German gruoni is recorded from the 8th century, in glosses from 765 and in the Tatian, Otfrid and Notker.[9][5][10] It meant “green” and also “fresh, new, recently obtained”, glossing Latin viridis, virens, recens and crudus.[5]

Semantic evolution

Besides the colour, grün has long meant “fresh, not dried”, as in grüne Bohnen and grüne Ware “fresh vegetables” (1678), and “raw, not smoked or salted”, as of herring.[11][4] As the colour of unripe fruit it came to mean “immature, inexperienced” in Early New High German, whence Grünschnabel “greenhorn” in the 18th century.[11][8] Auf keinen grünen Zweig kommen “to get nowhere” is recorded in 1520, at first without the negative.[11]

As the colour of spring, green stood for joy already in Middle High German, but for hope only in New High German, not before Opitz, while in the Middle Ages it was also the colour of envy, the devil and poison.[11] Jemandem nicht grün sein “to bear someone ill will”, used by Luther, probably belongs here.[11][8] The green of traffic lights gave grünes Licht geben after English to give the green light.[11] In the second half of the 20th century grün took on the sense “ecological”: the farm programme Grüner Plan dates from 1956, the party name Die Grünen from 1980, and Rot-Grün for a coalition with the Social Democrats was the Word of the Year in 1998.[8][11]

Timeline

  • 765 – Old High German gruoni appears in glosses.[9]
  • 1520 – First record of auf einen grünen Zweig kommen.[11]
  • 1678 – Grüne Ware is recorded for fresh vegetables.[11]
  • 18th century – Grünschnabel is recorded.[11]
  • 1956 – The agricultural Grüner Plan is named.[11]
  • 1980 – Die Grünen becomes a party name.[11]
  • 1998 – Rot-Grün is the German Word of the Year.[11]

Meanings

Adjective

  1. green, of the colour of fresh grass and leaves: Im Mai sind die Wiesen saftig grün.[12][1]
  2. Not yet ripe, unripe: grüne Tomaten.[12][1]
  3. Fresh and full of sap, not yet dried: grünes Holz.[12]
  4. Raw, not smoked, salted or dried: grüner Hering.[12][13]
  5. (often derogatory) inexperienced, immature.[12][1]
  6. (politics) Belonging to or concerning a green party.[12][1]
  7. environmentally friendly, committed to protecting the environment.[12][1]

Word family

  • Grün
  • grünen
  • Grünkohl
  • grünlich
  • Grünschnabel
  • Grünspecht
  • Gründonnerstag
  • Grünspan
  • Grünling
  • Gras
  • Granne
  • Grat
  • Grummet
  • English green

Usage notes

Jemandem nicht grün sein (colloquial) is to dislike someone, sich grün und blau ärgern is to be furious, and dasselbe in Grün (colloquial) means “practically the same thing”.[12] Alles im grünen Bereich “everything under control” comes from instruments that mark the normal range green and the danger range red.[8] The noun das Grün also names the green of a golf course and the suit of leaves in German playing cards.[12][1]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 9, 640
  3. ^ a b c Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 378
  4. ^ a b c d e f 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 Lloyd, Albert L.; Springer, Otto; Lühr, Rosemarie, et al. (1988–), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; online ewa.saw-leipzig.de, p. 4, 667
  6. ^ a b Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  7. ^ 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. 4, 664
  8. ^ a b c d e Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2014), 5th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin / Mannheim / Zürich: Dudenverlag
  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. 134
  11. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
  12. ^ a b c d e f g h i Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
  13. ^ Wiktionary, das freie Wörterbuch (German Wiktionary), de.wiktionary.org