Etymologically
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halten

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Pronunciation

  • /ˈhaltn̩/, /ˈhaltən/[1]

Forms

halten (class 7 strong, third-person singular present hält, past tense hielt, past participle gehalten, auxiliary haben)[1] Forms with ld, such as halden, occur beside halten from Old High German until the 16th century.[2] The present forms du hältst, er hält became fixed only in the 17th century; until then unumlauted haltet and shortened halt were also used.[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German halten, inherited from Old High German haltan, inherited from Proto-Germanic *haldaną (“to hold, keep”), originally a reduplicating strong verb.[3][4][1] The same word is Gothic 𐌷𐌰𐌻𐌳𐌰𐌽 (haldan, “to tend (cattle)”), Old Saxon haldan, Old Norse halda, Old English healdan and Old Frisian halda, and today Dutch houden, English hold and Swedish hålla.[3][4][5]

Pfeifer, the Duden and Paul take “to tend cattle”, the sense of the Gothic verb, as the original meaning;[4][6][7] Kluge puts it as “to guard, protect, keep”, from which “to hold fast” developed.[3] The further origin is unclear.[3][8] Pfeifer, the Duden and Wahrig, taking the dental as a present suffix, connect it with Ancient Greek κέλλω (kéllō, “to drive, put ashore”), Sanskrit कलयति (kaláyati, “drives (cattle), holds”) and Latin celer (“swift”), from the root Proto-Indo-European *kel- (“to drive”).[4][6][8] Kluge, like Seebold, prefers on grounds of meaning the root *kʷel- (“to turn, move around”) of colō (“to tend, cultivate”) and πέλομαι (pélomai, “to be in motion”), though this requires the labial element to have been lost before /o/.[3][4] Wiktionary also mentions *ḱel- (“to hide”).[1]

In Old High German the second and third person singular of the present show no umlaut in Upper German, because of the /l/ before a consonant, but do in Franconian.[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German haltan is recorded from the 8th century, in glosses (perhaps about 765), the Benedictine Rule, Isidor, the Murbach Hymns, Tatian, Otfrid and Notker.[9][10][11] It meant “to hold fast, keep, preserve”, “to watch, observe, follow (a rule)” and “to protect, guard, save, redeem”; the present participle haltanto was used for “the Saviour”.[9][11]

Semantic evolution

Paul notes that the main modern sense, “to hold in the hand”, is secondary; it became more prominent when haben, which had competed with halten in this use, gave it up almost completely.[7] The old sense “to tend cattle” lives on in Bavarian dialects, together with Halter “herdsman”.[7][6] From “to tend” came both “to attend to, observe, keep” and “to hold fast”, “to stop, remain”, and finally, perhaps under the influence of haben, “to regard as, believe”.[4] From “to attend to” came “to fulfil”, as in keeping a law or one's word, and in phrases like eine Rede halten or Wache halten the verb is only a weak support for the noun.[7]

Wahrig takes unterhalten (17th century) as probably a loan rendering of French entretenir.[8] Per Anhalter fahren “to hitchhike” became current in the mid-20th century.[4][6]

Timeline

  • 8th century – Old High German haltan appears in glosses;[10] bihaltan “to keep, preserve” is also recorded.[4]
  • c. 1000 – haltāri “saviour” is recorded.[4]
  • 15th century – Behälter and Behältnis appear.[4][6]
  • 16th century – erhalten becomes common.[4][6]
  • 17th century – The present forms du hältst, er hält become fixed.[2]
  • Mid-20th century – per Anhalter fahren “to hitchhike” becomes current.[4]

Meanings

Verb

  1. To hold, have in one's grip and not let go; to keep something in place: eine Leiter halten.[12][1]
  2. To put and keep in a certain position: den Kopf gesenkt halten.[12]
  3. To stop, hold back;[12][1] (intransitive) to come to a stop, of vehicles: Der Bus hält hier nicht.[12][1]
  4. To keep in a certain state; to keep animals or a car: das Zimmer warm halten, Hühner halten.[12][1]
  5. (intransitive) To last, stay in place, of fastenings or glue; of food, to keep fresh.[12][1]
  6. With für: to take for, consider; with von: to think well or badly of.[12][1]
  7. (reflexive) With an: to keep to, follow (rules, an agreement).[12][1]
  8. To keep (a promise, one's word); to give (a speech, a lecture).[12][1]

Word family

  • Halt
  • Halter
  • Haltung
  • haltbar
  • abhalten
  • anhalten
  • Anhalter
  • aufhalten
  • aushalten
  • behalten
  • Behälter
  • Behältnis
  • einhalten
  • Einhalt
  • enthalten
  • enthaltsam
  • erhalten
  • unterhalten
  • Unterhaltung
  • verhalten
  • haushalten
  • Gehalt
  • Hinterhalt

Usage notes

An sich halten means to restrain oneself.[12] Paul quotes über etwas halten “to watch over something” from Schiller and Goethe; it is now dated.[7]

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 Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 10, 275
  3. ^ a b c d e Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 389
  4. ^ 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
  5. ^ Wiktionary, das freie Wörterbuch (German Wiktionary), de.wiktionary.org
  6. ^ a b c d e f Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag
  7. ^ 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
  8. ^ a b c Wahrig-Burfeind, Renate, ed., Wahrig Herkunftswörterbuch, Gütersloh / München: Wissen Media Verlag; online edition at wissen.de
  9. ^ 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, 785
  10. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
  11. ^ a b Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 139
  12. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag