Etymologically
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konkret

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Pronunciation

  • /kɔŋˈkʁeːt/[1]

Forms

konkret (strong nominative masculine singular konkreter, comparative konkreter, superlative am konkretesten)[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin concrētus (“grown together, thickened, solid”), taken over in the 18th century from the language of philosophy.[2][3][4] The Latin adjective is the past participle of concrēscō (“to grow together, harden”), from con- (“together”) and crēscō (“to grow”).[2][5] Medieval philosophy had made the participle the opposite of abstractus from the 12th century on, beginning with Gilbert of Poitiers, and German borrowed the word as a term of that pair.[3][6] The same word is Dutch concreet, English concrete, French concret and Swedish konkret.[2] Through the Latin verb of growing it is related to kreieren.[2][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

At first German writers mostly kept the Latin phrase in concreto, found in 1765 in the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek, which Wieland in 1798 still called the way the schools speak.[6] The adjective itself appears in Winckelmann's essay on allegory of 1766, which speaks of concrete Bilder “concrete images”, meaning things perceptible and solid as opposed to abstract notions.[6]

Semantic evolution

Paul defines the word as “really present, individual, definite”, the opposite of abstrakt, and quotes Brecht's line Und die Frage konkret gestellt “and the question put concretely”.[7] From the late 18th century linguistics used the noun Konkretum for a noun naming something perceptible, after the logicians' Medieval Latin concretum.[3] The verb konkretisieren “to make concrete, state more precisely” is a 20th-century word, though Konkretisierung is found from the middle of the 19th century.[3][7]

Since about 1950 the adjective has named movements in the arts: konkrete Poesie works directly with the material of language, and Öyvind Fahlström published a manifesto for it in 1953.[7] Konkrete Musik and konkrete Kunst are loan translations of French musique concrète and art concret.[8] Hungarian took the word as Hungarian konkrét, recorded from 1861.[9]

Timeline

  • 12th century – Medieval philosophy sets Latin concretus against abstractus.[3][6]
  • 1765 – The Latin phrase in concreto is used in a German review.[6]
  • 1766 – Winckelmann writes of concrete Bilder.[6]
  • Late 18th century – The noun Konkretum enters the grammar of nouns.[3]
  • Mid-19th century – First record of Konkretisierung.[3]
  • 1861 – Hungarian konkrét is recorded.[9]
  • 1941 – konkretisieren appears in the Duden.[7]
  • 1953 – Öyvind Fahlström's manifesto for konkrete Poesie.[7]

Meanings

Adjective

  1. concrete, tangible: perceptible by the senses, actually present, not abstrakt: Der Plan muss sich an der konkreten Wirklichkeit messen lassen. Also in names of artistic movements: konkrete Kunst, konkrete Musik, konkrete Poesie.[8][1]
  2. Relating to the particular case in question: Was bedeutet das konkret für unsere Abteilung?[8][1]
  3. Present at the moment, now at hand: in diesem konkreten Fall.[8]
  4. Definite and precise, clear: Sie nannte konkrete Zahlen. Used as an adverb it means “in concrete terms, in practice”.[8][1]

Word family

  • konkretisieren
  • Konkretum
  • Konkretisierung

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 524
  3. ^ a b c d e f g 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 Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2007), 4th ed., Duden vol. 7, Mannheim: Dudenverlag
  5. ^ Wahrig-Burfeind, Renate, ed., Wahrig Herkunftswörterbuch, Gütersloh / München: Wissen Media Verlag; online edition at wissen.de
  6. ^ a b c d e f Schulz, Hans; Basler, Otto, et al. (1913–1988), Deutsches Fremdwörterbuch, 7 vols., Strasbourg / Berlin: Trübner / De Gruyter; 2nd ed., ed. Gerhard Strauß et al. (1995–), Berlin / New York: De Gruyter; via OWID, Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache
  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 d e Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
  9. ^ a b Lehnwortportal Deutsch (2012–), Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim, lwp.ids-mannheim.de