Etymologically
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lauten

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Pronunciation

  • /ˈlaʊ̯.tən/[1]

Forms

lauten (third-person singular present lautet, past tense lautete, past participle gelautet, auxiliary haben)[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German lūten (“to sound, ring”), inherited from Old High German hlūtēn, inherited from Proto-West Germanic *hlūdēn (“to sound”), a verb formed from the adjective laut “loud”.[1][2][3][4] The same verb is Old Dutch lūdōn and Dutch luiden.[4][1] Beside it Old High German had the causative hlūtjan, whence läuten, which in modern German absorbed the general sense “to sound”.[1][4][5]

The adjective, Old High German hlūt, is Proto-Germanic *hlūdaz (“loud”), also in Old Saxon hlūd, Old English hlūd (whence English loud) and Old Frisian hlūd.[2][6][7] It was originally the to-participle of Proto-Indo-European *ḱlew- (“to hear”), meaning “heard, audible”.[2][7] A corresponding participle with the meaning “famous” is Sanskrit श्रुत (śrutá), Ancient Greek κλυτός (klutós) and Latin inclutus.[2][7] Kroonen points out that the long vowel must have arisen within Germanic, since the root did not end in a laryngeal.[6] The root is also in Leumund, lauschen and Old Church Slavonic слово (slovo, “word”).[2][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

In Middle High German lūten meant “to sound, resound”, of any noise that carried: in Engelhart broken spears lûte alsam ein donerslac “sounded like a thunderclap”.[4][8]

Semantic evolution

Luther still used it of instruments: an welchem ort jr nu die posaunen lauten höret “where you hear the trumpets sound” (Nehemiah 4:20).[4][5] It was said of bells into the 19th century, in Schiller, Jean Paul and Immermann, before läuten replaced it there.[5] Adelung still records it for a voice and an instrument, as in “the violin sounds very loud”.[9]

The sense that survives grew out of Laut in the meaning “wording”: lauten gives the wording, and then the content, of a speech or a document, which was originally read aloud.[5] Early New High German already used it for “to have a certain wording, to be written so”, and also “to mean”.[8] Schiller's wie es zu Meinungen lautet “as rumour has it” is now expressed by verlauten.[5]

Timeline

  • Old High German – hlūtēn “to sound” beside hlūtjan.[4][1]
  • 16th century – Luther writes of hearing the trumpets lauten.[4]
  • 1793 – Adelung still records the verb for the sound of voices and instruments.[9]
  • 19th century – Schiller, Jean Paul and Immermann still use it of bells.[5]

Meanings

Verb

  1. To read, to have a certain wording: Die Antwort lautete: „Morgen.“[3][1]
  2. (elevated) To sound, come across in a certain way: Ihre Auskunft lautete wenig ermutigend.[3]
  3. To have a certain content: auf etwas lauten: Die Anklage lautet auf Betrug;[3][5] auf jemandes Namen lauten, of a document or account, to be in someone's name.[3][5]
  4. (linguistics) To pronounce a word in a certain way.[3]
  5. (obsolete) To sound, ring.[1][5]

Word family

  • verlauten
  • anlauten
  • auslauten
  • umlauten
  • ablauten
  • Lautung

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 563
  3. ^ a b c d e f Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 12, 372
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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 Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  7. ^ a b c d Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
  8. ^ a b Anderson, Robert R.; Goebel, Ulrich; Reichmann, Oskar, eds. (1989–), Frühneuhochdeutsches Wörterbuch, Berlin / New York: De Gruyter; FWB-online, fwb-online.de
  9. ^ a b Adelung, Johann Christoph (1793–1801), Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart, 2nd ed., 4 vols., Leipzig: Breitkopf