lassen

Forms

lassen (class 7 strong, third-person singular present lässt, past tense ließ, past participle gelassen or (with an infinitive) lassen, auxiliary haben)^[1] The long vowel of Middle High German lâʒen was shortened in the written language, as a spelling of the 15th century already shows, but until the 17th century poets still liked to rhyme lassen with words in long a.^[2] East Central German, Hessian, Thuringian, Saxon, Silesian and Berlin speech still say lâszen with a long vowel, and Swabian has lauʒen.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German lāzen, inherited from Old High German lāzan, inherited from Proto-West Germanic *lātan, inherited from Proto-Germanic *lētaną (“to let, leave behind”), originally a reduplicating strong verb.^[3][4][1] The shortened form lān stands beside it in Old High German and Middle High German.^[4][5] The same verb is Gothic 𐌻𐌴𐍄𐌰𐌽 (lētan), Old Norse láta, Old English lǣtan, Old Frisian lēta and Old Saxon lātan, continued in English let, Dutch laten and Swedish låta.^[3][6][4]

Kroonen and Wiktionary derive it from Proto-Indo-European *leh₁d- (“to let go, be tired”), comparing Ancient Greek ληδεῖν (lēdeîn, “to be tired”) and Latin lassus (“tired, weary”).^[6][1] Pfeifer and the Duden take the same comparisons back to an extended root *lēid-, from *lēi- (“to slacken”), and the Duden dictionaries give the original sense as “to grow slack, tired”.^[4][7][8] Kluge is more cautious: these words have no exact equivalent of the Germanic verb, the Greek one is an uncertain gloss, and Lithuanian léisti (“to let, let go, set free”) matches the meaning better, but uniting both groups under a root with a long diphthong is not free of problems.^[3] The adjectives lass “weary” and lässig belong to the same family.^[3][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German lāzan is recorded from the 8th century.^[3][4] Paul explains that the verb first described a state of doing nothing: not holding on to something, not stopping a movement or an event.^[9]

Semantic evolution

From letting something happen the verb came to describe an action of its own, causing something to be done: ein Haus bauen lassen is to have a house built.^[9][8] With a plain accusative it used to mean “not to prevent something from leaving one”, as in Tränen lassen “to shed tears”, now dated, and in Blut lassen and zur Ader lassen “to let blood”, whose origin is no longer understood.^[9] It also meant “to leave behind”, as in the song Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen, a sense now taken over by verlassen.^[9] Luther's ich lasse dich nicht, du segnest mich denn (“I will not let thee go, except thou bless me”, Genesis 32:26) shows the sense “to let go”.^[9]

The verb has a large family of particle verbs and prefixed verbs (ablassen, entlassen, verlassen, zulassen) and abstract nouns such as Anlass, Middle High German anlāʒ “beginning, starting point of a race, occasion”.^[3][4] Unablässig “unceasing” dates from the 16th century, and Anlasser, the starter of an engine, from about 1900.^[4]

Timeline

• 8th century – Old High German lāzan is first recorded.^[3][4]
• 11th century – The short form lān appears in Old High German glosses.^[5]
• 1060–1065 – Middle High German lāzen is used by Williram of Ebersberg.^[10]
• 15th century – A spelling with ss shows the shortened vowel.^[2]
• 16th century – First record of unablässig.^[4]
• 17th century – Poets still rhyme lassen with long a.^[2]
• About 1900 – Anlasser comes to mean a device for starting an electric motor.^[4]

Meanings

Verb

1. (with an infinitive) To have something done, to cause something to happen: Wir lassen das Dach reparieren.^[8][1]
2. (with an infinitive) To allow, let, not prevent: Sie ließ die Katze im Bett schlafen.^[8][1]
3. (reflexive, with an infinitive) To be able to be done: Das Fenster lässt sich nicht öffnen.^[1]
4. To leave somewhere or in a certain state: Er hat den Schirm im Zug gelassen.^[8][1]
5. (colloquial) To stop doing something, refrain from it: Er kann das Grübeln nicht lassen.^[8][1]
6. To let someone have something, to leave it to them: Sie ließ ihm das letzte Stück Kuchen.^[8][1]

Word family

• ablassen
• anlassen
• auslassen
• bleibenlassen
• einlassen
• entlassen
• erlassen
• hinterlassen
• nachlassen
• niederlassen
• überlassen
• unterlassen
• verlassen
• zulassen
• Anlass

Related words

• lasch
• lässig
• lass
• gelassen

Usage notes

With an infinitive the perfect uses the infinitive lassen instead of the participle gelassen: Ich habe das Auto waschen lassen.^[8][1] Haare lassen müssen is “to suffer a painful loss”.^[9]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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, 213
3. ^ a b c d e f g Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 560
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
5. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
6. ^ a b Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
7. ^ Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag, p. 496
8. ^ a b c d e f g h Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
9. ^ a b c d e f Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
10. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling