Etymologically
Log in

landen

This is the current revision of this entry, as edited by bogdan on 20 October 2026 at 20:27. This address is a permanent link to this version.
Changes in this edit History

Pronunciation

  • /ˈlandən/, [ˈlandŋ̩][1]

Forms

landen (third-person singular present landet, past tense landete, past participle gelandet, auxiliary haben or sein)[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Middle Low German landen (“to come ashore”), a Low German verb formed from Land, which entered the standard language in the 17th century and displaced the Upper German länden.[2][3][1][4] Paul explains the modern form as following the Dutch and Low German verb and the Middle High German past forms lante and gelant, under the influence of the noun.[5] The same verb is Middle Dutch landen, Dutch landen and the English verb land, and Wiktionary reconstructs Proto-West Germanic *landōn (“to arrive on land”).[3][1]

The verb it displaced continues Old High German lenten, Middle High German lenden (“to bring to land, to land; to bring to an end”), the source of Lände “landing place”.[3][5][4] The base noun, Proto-Germanic *landą, goes back, with Celtic and Balto-Slavic cognates such as Old Irish land (“open space”) and Russian dialect ляда (ljáda, “cleared land”), to Proto-Indo-European *lendʰ- (“open land, heath”).[3][4][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Stieler's dictionary (1691) is the first to give the new form landen, although it records anländen as more common.[5][6] The verb was at first a seafaring word: to come ashore with a ship, and in particular to sail to an enemy coast and put soldiers ashore.[7][6]

Semantic evolution

The perfect is formed with sein, though writers such as Schiller also used haben.[5][6] Paul finds it applied to something other than ships and crews from 1821, when Goethe wrote of a twig thrown into a stream that might land in front of a garden, and the transitive use, landing goods or troops, only from about 1885.[5] In the 20th century it became the verb for aircraft and spacecraft touching down; the noun Landung, recorded from the early 18th century for ships, followed the same path.[8][3] Hungarian borrowed it as landol (1932).[9]

In colloquial use one ends up somewhere unexpected (im Graben landen) and bei jemandem landen is to make a good impression on someone;[8][5] einen Treffer landen is to score a hit.[8][5]

Timeline

  • 8th century – Old High German lenten “to bring to land” is recorded.[3]
  • 17th century – Low German landen enters the written language.[2][6]
  • 1691 – Stieler's dictionary records landen.[5]
  • Early 18th century – First record of Landung.[3]
  • 1821 – Goethe uses it of something other than a ship.[5]
  • c. 1885 – Transitive use, landing goods or troops.[5]
  • 1932 – Hungarian landol is recorded.[9]

Meanings

Verb

  1. (of aircraft, birds, spacecraft; with sein) To come down onto the ground, to land: Die Maschine landet um acht in Wien.[8][1]
  2. (of a ship or its crew; with sein) To reach the shore: Das Boot landete an der Insel.[8][1]
  3. (familiar; with sein) To arrive at one's destination after a journey.[8]
  4. (colloquial; with sein) To end up somewhere unexpected: Der Brief landete im Papierkorb.[8][1]
  5. (with haben) To bring (an aircraft) down; to set down (troops) from the air; to put (people, goods) ashore.[8][1]
  6. (colloquial) bei jemandem landen, to find favour with someone;[8][5] einen Treffer landen, to score a hit.[8][5]

Word family

  • Landung
  • anlanden
  • notlanden
  • Landebahn
  • Landeplatz

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 558
  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 c Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2007), 4th ed., Duden vol. 7, Mannheim: Dudenverlag
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
  6. ^ 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. 12, 101
  7. ^ Adelung, Johann Christoph (1793–1801), Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart, 2nd ed., 4 vols., Leipzig: Breitkopf, p. 2, 1882
  8. ^ 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
  9. ^ a b Lehnwortportal Deutsch (2012–), Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim, lwp.ids-mannheim.de