hängen

Forms

hängen (class 7 strong or irregular strong, third-person singular present hängt, past tense hing or (nonstandard) hang, past participle gehangen, auxiliary haben or sein)^[1] Transitive: weak (past tense hängte, past participle gehängt, auxiliary haben).^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German hāhen, inherited from Old High German hāhan (“to hang up, crucify”), inherited from Proto-Germanic *hanhaną (“to hang”), a strong verb, blended with hangen, from Old High German hangēn (“to be hanging”), and with hengen, from hengen (“to let hang; to allow”), which continues Proto-Germanic *hangijaną (“to cause to hang”).^[2][3][1][4] The same strong verb is Gothic 𐌷𐌰𐌷𐌰𐌽 (hāhan), Old Norse hanga, Old English hōn and Old Frisian huā.^[2][5]

The nasal was lost before /h/ with lengthening of the vowel; the present was then rebuilt with the /ŋ/ of the past forms, as in fangen, and so fell together with the stative verb.^[2][3] In Middle High German the strong past hienc took over the intransitive meaning of hangete, and in the 12th century the stative verb began to be used transitively as well.^[3] Wiktionary adds that the combination of the present stem with the strong past is first found in the north and spread from Middle Low German hangen into Central German in the 14th century.^[1] Only in the 19th century was the usage regulated: the strong forms went to the intransitive use and the weak ones to the transitive.^[3]

Kluge traces the strong verb to Proto-Indo-European *ḱonk- (“to hang”), whose literal sense outside Germanic survives only in Hittite gank- (“to hang, weigh”); a transferred sense “to waver, be uncertain” is seen in Latin cūnctor (“to hesitate”).^[2][3][5] He rejects the connection with words for “hook” for morphological reasons, and Duden finds the relations outside Germanic not certain.^[2][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German hāhan “to hang, crucify” is found from the end of the 8th century in the Monsee Fragments, then in Tatian and Otfrid;^[7][8][9] hangēn “to be hanging” appears in glosses of the same time and in the Benedictine Rule, Tatian and Notker.^[7][8][9] hengen meant “to allow, permit, give way”.^[10][11]

Semantic evolution

The figurative senses “to depend on” and “to be attached to” were present from Old High German hangēn on, which also meant “to be dependent”.^[7][3] Many derivatives arose from them: Hang “slope; inclination” (15th century), abhängig, first “sloping” (15th century) and since the early 18th century “dependent”, Anhänger and anhänglich.^[3] The jingle mitgefangen, mitgehangen preserves the old transitive participle gehangen, which southern colloquial speech still uses.^[4] The old intransitive hangen survives in Swiss and southern dialects and in mit Hangen und Bangen.^[4][6]

Polish took over hengować “to delay” (1532) and the mining term hangować (1764).^[12]

Timeline

• End of the 8th century – Old High German hāhan in the Monsee Fragments and hangēn in glosses.^[7]
• 9th century – hengen “to allow”.^[3]
• 12th century – hangen begins to be used transitively.^[3]
• 14th century – The present hangen with the strong past spreads from the north into Central German.^[1]
• 15th century – Hang and abhängig “sloping” appear.^[3]
• 1532 – Polish borrows hengować.^[12]
• Early 18th century – abhängig comes to mean “dependent”.^[3]
• 19th century – Intransitive strong and transitive weak forms are separated by rule.^[3]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive) To hang, be suspended: Die Jacke hängt am Haken.^[13][1]
2. (intransitive) To hang down, droop; to lean to one side.^[13]
3. (intransitive, formal) To hover, float motionless in the air.^[13]
4. (intransitive, colloquial) To be stuck, make no progress; to lag behind; to hang around somewhere.^[13][14]
5. (intransitive) To depend (an or von something).^[13][1]
6. (intransitive) To be attached to, be fond of (an someone or something).^[13][1]
7. (transitive) To hang (something) up: ein Bild an die Wand hängen.^[1][14]
8. (transitive) To execute by hanging.^[1][14]
9. (reflexive) To attach oneself to someone, follow closely.^[1]

Word family

• Hang
• Abhang
• abhängig
• Anhang
• Anhänger
• anhänglich
• Anhängsel
• Gehänge
• Vorhang
• Umhang
• Verhängnis
• aufhängen
• abhängen
• zusammenhängen

Related words

• henken
• Henkel

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 393
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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 Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
5. ^ a b Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
6. ^ a b Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag, p. 353
7. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
8. ^ a b Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 138
9. ^ a b Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 140
10. ^ Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 148
11. ^ Lloyd, Albert L.; Springer, Otto; Lühr, Rosemarie, et al. (1988–), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; online ewa.saw-leipzig.de, p. 4, 952
12. ^ a b Lehnwortportal Deutsch (2012–), Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim, lwp.ids-mannheim.de
13. ^ a b c d e f Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
14. ^ a b c Wiktionary, das freie Wörterbuch (German Wiktionary), de.wiktionary.org