lesen

Forms

lesen (class 5 strong, third-person singular present liest, past tense las, past participle gelesen, past subjunctive läse, auxiliary haben)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German lesen, inherited from Old High German lesan, inherited from Proto-Germanic *lesaną (“to gather, pick”).^[2][3][4] The same strong verb is Gothic 𐌻𐌹𐍃𐌰𐌽 (lisan, “to gather”), Old Norse lesa, Old English lesan (“to gather, collect”), Old Frisian lesa and Old Saxon lesan.^[2][4] English kept it only in the dialect verb English lease (“to glean”).^[3][4] It continues Proto-Indo-European *les- (“to gather”), also found in Lithuanian lèsti (“to peck”) and Hittite leššāi- (“to pick up”).^[2][3][4] Kluge sees a variant of the root in Latin legō (“to gather; to read”) and Ancient Greek λέγω (légō, “to gather; to say”).^[2] Old High German still had grammatical change, with /r/ in the past plural and the past participle, but these forms were mostly levelled out by the 9th century.^[5][3]

Germanic shares only the sense “to gather, pick up”; how the verb came to mean “to read” is disputed.^[3] Kluge, Paul and Pfeifer see a loan meaning from Latin legō, which had both senses, the link being “to follow a track” and then “to follow written signs”;^[2][6][3] Kluge rejects the gathering of rune sticks as an explanation, since runes were not said to be “read” with this verb.^[2][6][3] Duden thinks it more likely that the verb already referred in Germanic times to gathering and interpreting the sticks cast for divination.^[7] Kroonen derives “to read” from an intermediate sense “to examine, analyse”, not from picking up letters.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German lesan is recorded from the 8th century, in the Abrogans and other glosses, and then in Tatian, Otfrid, Notker, the Benedictine Rule and the Monsee fragments.^[3][5][8] Its senses ranged from “to gather, pick up, collect” to “to read, read aloud, recite, study”.^[5][9]

Semantic evolution

In Middle High German lesen meant to gather selectively, pick up, put in order, perceive, read, read aloud, teach as a lecturer, say mass and tell.^[3][5] The old sense of gathering survives in harvesting: grapes and ears of corn are gelesen, and Luther wrote den Weinberg lesen; from it come Lese “harvest” (early 18th century), Auslese and erlesen.^[6][7] Sorting peas or lentils by picking out the bad ones is verlesen.^[6]

Because few people could read in older times, lesen often meant reading aloud; from this come reading mass and lecturing at a university, Vorlesungen halten.^[6] belesen “well-read” and lesbar “legible” belong to the 17th century.^[10] In computing lesen is used of reading data from a medium.^[11][5]

Timeline

• 8th century – Old High German lesan is first recorded, in glosses.^[3][9]
• 9th century – The past forms with /r/ (lārum) are mostly levelled to /s/.^[5]
• 16th century – Luther writes den Weinberg lesen for harvesting the vineyard.^[6]
• 17th century – belesen “well-read” and lesbar appear.^[10]
• Early 18th century – Lese “harvest, gathering” appears.^[7]

Meanings

Verb

1. To read (a text, words, signs): sie liest jeden Abend Krimis “she reads crime novels every evening”; also Noten lesen “to read music”.^[12][1]
2. To read aloud, give a reading: der Dichter las aus seinem neuen Roman “the poet read from his new novel”.^[12]
3. To lecture at a university;^[12][11] eine Messe lesen is to say mass.^[12][11]
4. (reflexive) To read in a certain way: der Text liest sich mühsam “the text makes hard reading”.^[12][1]
5. To pick, gather or harvest (grapes, ears of corn); to sort by hand, picking out the bad ones.^[1][11]
6. (computing) To read data from a storage medium.^[11]

Word family

• Leser
• Lesung
• Lese
• Weinlese
• Auslese
• auslesen
• erlesen
• belesen
• verlesen
• vorlesen
• Vorlesung
• nachlesen
• Lesebuch
• leserlich

Related words

• leer
• English lease

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 573
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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 d e Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
5. ^ a b c d e f Lloyd, Albert L.; Springer, Otto; Lühr, Rosemarie, et al. (1988–), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; online ewa.saw-leipzig.de, p. 5, 1202
6. ^ 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
7. ^ a b c Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag, p. 509
8. ^ Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 198
9. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
10. ^ a b Wahrig-Burfeind, Renate, ed., Wahrig Herkunftswörterbuch, Gütersloh / München: Wissen Media Verlag; online edition at wissen.de
11. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, das freie Wörterbuch (German Wiktionary), de.wiktionary.org
12. ^ a b c d e Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag