häufig

Forms

häufig (strong nominative masculine singular häufiger, comparative häufiger, superlative am häufigsten)^[1]

Etymology

It is from German Haufen + -ig, formed in the 16th century and first meaning “in heaps, heaped”;^[2][3][1] Wiktionary analyses it as the stem of häufen with the suffix.^[2][3][1] It displaced the older form häuficht in the written language in the 17th century; compare Middle High German hūfeht (“heaped”).^[4][3]

The noun is hūfe, Old High German hūfo, Proto-Germanic *hūpô, found only in German, beside the ablaut form houf, Old Saxon hōp and Old English hēap, continued in English heap and Dutch hoop.^[2][3][1] Outside Germanic the nearest form is Lithuanian káupas (“heap”).^[2] Pfeifer takes it from Proto-Indo-European *kewb-, an extension of Proto-Indo-European *kew- (“to bend”), the root also behind Hüfte and hüpfen.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The adjective appears in the 16th century; the FWB records it from the second third of the century, of people and animals “in crowds, in great numbers” and of things “in heaps, in large quantity, abundant”.^[2][5][3] An early dictionary glosses Latin conglobatim, turmatim “in a mass, in troops” with heufig.^[4]

Semantic evolution

Until the early 19th century it meant “in heaps, plentiful, in crowds”: Luther's Bible has the princes coming heufig before the king (Daniel 6:6), and Voss's Odyssey speaks of häufige Kiesel, densely packed pebbles.^[4][3][6] The FWB also records a sense “very strong, violent”.^[5] The sense “often”, of repetition in time, is recorded from the second half of the 18th century, and Adelung already gives it as a figurative use.^[3][6][7] Speakers today no longer connect the word with Haufen.^[6] The old sense can still be read in Eichendorff and Kleist, where blood or tears flow häufig.^[8]

Timeline

• 16th century – First record, in the sense “in heaps, in great numbers”.^[2][5]
• 17th century – häufig displaces häuficht in the written language.^[4]
• Second half of the 18th century – First record of the sense “often”.^[3][6]
• Early 19th century – The sense “in heaps, abundant” goes out of use.^[3][6]

Meanings

Adjective

1. frequent, occurring often or in large numbers: ein häufiger Irrtum.^[8][1]
2. common.^[1]
3. (literary, dated) Plentiful, in large quantity.^[8]

Adverb

1. often, frequently.^[1][8]

Related words

• Haufen
• häufeln
• zuhauf
• English heap

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 399
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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 Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 10, 593
5. ^ a b c Anderson, Robert R.; Goebel, Ulrich; Reichmann, Oskar, eds. (1989–), Frühneuhochdeutsches Wörterbuch, Berlin / New York: De Gruyter; FWB-online, fwb-online.de
6. ^ a b c d e Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag
7. ^ Adelung, Johann Christoph (1793–1801), Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart, 2nd ed., 4 vols., Leipzig: Breitkopf, p. 2, 1007
8. ^ a b c d Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag