kaufen

Forms

kaufen (third-person singular present kauft, past tense kaufte, past participle gekauft, auxiliary haben)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German koufen, inherited from Old High German koufōn, inherited from Proto-West Germanic *kaupōn, inherited from Proto-Germanic *kaupōną (“to trade, buy”).^[2][3][1] The same verb is Gothic 𐌺𐌰𐌿𐍀𐍉𐌽 (kaupōn, “to trade”), Old Norse kaupa, Old English ċēapian, Old Saxon kōpian and Dutch kopen.^[2][3]

The Germanic verb rests on a very early borrowing from Latin: behind it stands Latin caupō (“innkeeper, petty trader”), which was also taken over as Old High German koufo (“merchant”) and Old English cȳpa.^[2][4] Kluge and Duden think that the verbs were borrowed from the Latin derivative caupōnor (“to haggle, huckster”) rather than formed in Germanic from the borrowed noun.^[2][5] Pfeifer and Wiktionary prefer the other way, a Germanic verb formed from the noun Proto-Germanic *kaupô (“merchant, innkeeper”).^[3][1] According to Pfeifer the Latin word reached the Germans around the beginning of the Christian era through Roman soldiers on the middle and lower Rhine,^[3] and Duden points out that the innkeeper who followed the legions sold the wine the Germans prized and was the small trader of the frontier.^[5] The Latin noun is usually compared with Ancient Greek κάπηλος (kápēlos, “retail dealer”); neither word has a secure etymology, and both are usually taken to be loanwords.^[4]

The noun Kauf is an early back-formation from the verb, and a related English word is cheap.^[2][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German koufen is recorded from the 8th century, first in glosses, then in the Benedictine Rule, the Tatian, Otfrid and Notker.^[2][6][7] It meant “to buy, acquire”, but also “to redeem”, “to sell” and “to trade”.^[8][6]

Semantic evolution

The verb first covered the whole of trading, both buying and selling, and Middle High German koufen could still mean “to barter” and “to sell”.^[5][3] The same breadth shows in the derivatives: Käufer meant both buyer and seller, and until the 16th century also merchant, and Kaufmann meant the buyer as well as the seller into the 18th century.^[3] Adelung, around 1800, still knew mit jemandem kaufen “to deal with someone” from everyday speech, but otherwise the meaning had narrowed to “to buy”.^[9]

In Early New High German kaufen could also mean “to win someone with money, to bribe” and “to win a spouse by a marriage contract”.^[10] The bribing sense survives in colloquial German, as does sich jemanden kaufen “to take someone to task”.^[11] Regional forms are umlauted käufen and Low German köpen.^[2]

Timeline

• 8th century – Old High German koufen appears in glosses.^[2][6]
• 8th century – firkoufen, the ancestor of verkaufen, is recorded.^[3]
• 9th century – koufāri “buyer, seller, merchant” and koufman are recorded.^[3]
• 10th–11th century – kouflīh, the ancestor of käuflich, appears.^[3]
• 16th century – Käufer is restricted to the buyer.^[3]
• 17th century – käuflich means only “that can be bought”.^[3]

Meanings

Verb

1. To buy, to purchase: Wir haben das Fahrrad gebraucht gekauft.^[11][1]
2. To shop, to buy one's goods somewhere: Sie kauft nur auf dem Wochenmarkt.^[11]
3. (colloquial) To bribe: Der Zeuge war gekauft.^[11][12]
4. (colloquial) sich jemanden kaufen: to take someone to task: Den kaufe ich mir nach dem Spiel!^[11]

Word family

• Käufer
• käuflich
• Kaufmann
• verkaufen
• Kauf
• abkaufen
• ankaufen
• einkaufen
• erkaufen
• freikaufen
• Kauffrau
• Kaufhaus
• loskaufen

Related words

• English cheap

Usage notes

Die Katze im Sack kaufen (“to buy the cat in the sack”) is to buy something without examining it, like English “to buy a pig in a poke”.^[1] Dafür kann ich mir nichts kaufen means “that is no use to me”.^[11]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 483
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 Lloyd, Albert L.; Springer, Otto; Lühr, Rosemarie, et al. (1988–), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; online ewa.saw-leipzig.de, p. 5, 727
5. ^ a b c Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag, p. 427
6. ^ a b c Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
7. ^ Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 181
8. ^ Lloyd, Albert L.; Springer, Otto; Lühr, Rosemarie, et al. (1988–), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; online ewa.saw-leipzig.de, p. 5, 724
9. ^ Adelung, Johann Christoph (1793–1801), Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart, 2nd ed., 4 vols., Leipzig: Breitkopf
10. ^ Anderson, Robert R.; Goebel, Ulrich; Reichmann, Oskar, eds. (1989–), Frühneuhochdeutsches Wörterbuch, Berlin / New York: De Gruyter; FWB-online, fwb-online.de
11. ^ a b c d e f Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
12. ^ Wiktionary, das freie Wörterbuch (German Wiktionary), de.wiktionary.org