Etymologically
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mehr

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Pronunciation

  • /meːr/, [meːɐ̯], [mɛɐ̯][1]

Forms

mehr (not inflected; comparative of viel, superlative meist)[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German mēr, mēre, inherited from Old High German mēro, mēr, inherited from Proto-West Germanic *maiʀō, inherited from Proto-Germanic *maizô, the comparative of viel.[2][4][1] The same word is Old Saxon mēro, Old Norse meiri and Old English māra; Dutch meer, English more and Swedish mer continue it.[2][5] The adverb, without an ending and with the regular loss of the final consonant, is mē and mā.[2]

The Germanic form contains the comparative suffix Proto-Germanic *-iz-, the zero grade of Proto-Indo-European *-i̯es-, added to the stem Proto-Indo-European *mē- (“big, considerable”), which is also the root of Märchen.[2][4][6] Comparable formations outside Germanic are Old Irish mó and Welsh mwy, and perhaps Oscan mais.[2][5][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German had the adjective mēro and the adverb mēr from the 8th century, meaning “more, greater, better, further”.[4][7] It appears in the Tatian, Otfrid and Notker,[7] and in the Monsee fragments and the Lorsch confession.[8] In Middle High German mē(r) and mēre were used at first as nouns, “something larger, a greater amount”.[3]

Semantic evolution

Old High German treated mēr as a positive and made a new comparative mēriro, Middle High German mērer, which gave mehrere “several”, and a superlative mērste.[4] Like viel, mehr became attributive (mit mehr Glück), but unlike it stayed uninflected; attempts to inflect it (Jean Paul's mehre) did not last.[3] As an adverb it became the comparative of sehr; already in Middle High German it also meant “any longer”, a sense that lives on after negations (nicht mehr, nimmer).[3]

Mehren “to increase” is Old High German mērōn (8th century) and vermehren dates from the 15th century.[4] Mehrheit “majority” was coined in 1719 by Kramer after Dutch meerderheid, and mehrfach “multiple” (around 1800) imitates French multiple.[4][6]

Timeline

  • 8th century – Old High German mēro, mēr; the verb mērōn “to increase”.[4]
  • c. 1000 – Old High German mērheit “being more”.[4]
  • 15th century – vermehren.[4]
  • 1719 – Kramer forms Mehrheit after Dutch meerderheid.[4]
  • c. 1800 – mehrfach “multiple”.[4]

Meanings

Pronoun

  1. more: a greater amount or number than a given one: wir brauchen mehr Geld “we need more money”.[9][1]

Adverb

  1. More, to a greater degree.[1][10]
  2. rather: er ist mehr Dichter als Gelehrter “he is more a poet than a scholar”.[3]
  3. With a negation: no longer, not any more: er wird niemanden mehr beleidigen “he won't insult anyone again”.[3][1]

Word family

  • mehren
  • vermehren
  • mehrere
  • Mehrheit
  • mehrfach
  • Mehrwert
  • nimmer

Usage notes

In Switzerland the noun das Mehr means a majority of votes or the result of a vote, a use the Grimms' dictionary quotes from Maaler and Stalder.[9][11] In south-eastern German nur mehr means “only … still”.[3]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e 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. 612
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l 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 Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  6. ^ a b Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2014), 5th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin / Mannheim / Zürich: Dudenverlag
  7. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
  8. ^ Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 220
  9. ^ a b Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
  10. ^ Wiktionary, das freie Wörterbuch (German Wiktionary), de.wiktionary.org
  11. ^ Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 12, 1887