oder

Forms

oder (coordinating conjunction; also a sentence-final particle)^[1] Middle High German had the shorter ode, od beside oder.^[2] The short form od still appears now and then in the 16th century.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German oder, inherited from Old High German odar, an altered form of the older odo, which took its final /r/ on the model of aber and weder.^[4][5][6][1]

Pfeifer and the Duden derive odo from the still older eddo, with a change of vowel in unstressed use;^[4][6] the EWA objects that no change of /e/ to /o/ in weak stress can be shown, and sets up a separate source for the forms with /o/, together with Old English oþþe, the source of English or.^[5][6] The form with /e/ matches Old Saxon ettho, Old Norse eða and Gothic 𐌰𐌹𐌸𐌸𐌰𐌿 (aiþþau).^[4][5][1]

The second part of these forms is Proto-Germanic *þau (“or, than”).^[5][1] The first is uncertain: Pfeifer connects it with 𐌹𐌸 (iþ, “but, if”) and so with Latin et (“and”) and Ancient Greek ἔτι (éti, “moreover”), from Proto-Indo-European *eti (“beyond, and”), while Wiktionary also considers the stem of ob.^[4][1] Old Saxon eftho and Old Frisian ieftha point to a parallel formation with that stem.^[4][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The oldest Old High German forms, eddo and odo, are recorded in the 8th century, in glosses from about 765, meaning “or”, but also “and” and “otherwise”, for Latin aut, vel and sive.^[5][8] The word occurs in the Hildebrandslied, Isidor, the Benedictine Rule and several baptismal vows and confessions.^[9]

Semantic evolution

The form with /r/ is recorded from the 10th century,^[4] became frequent at the beginning of the 13th century and had almost entirely replaced ode by the 14th.^[3] In New High German its first syllable was lengthened, so that poets could no longer use it as a single syllable.^[3]

In Early New High German oder often joined things without excluding one of them, in the sense “and, or rather, as well as”; the strictly exclusive use was much less common.^[10] In modern colloquial speech, especially in the southwest, oder? at the end of a sentence asks the listener for agreement, and in Swabian and Alemannic it is also added to commands.^[7] The Yiddish word אָדער (oder) comes from the Middle High German word.^[1]

Timeline

• 8th century – Old High German eddo and odo are recorded.^[5][4]
• 10th century – The form oder appears;^[4] odar follows in the 11th.^[4]
• Early 13th century – Forms with /r/ become frequent.^[3]
• 14th century – oder has nearly displaced ode.^[3]
• 1588 – One of the last records of the short od, in a Swiss text.^[3]

Meanings

Conjunction

1. or: joins possibilities of which only one can be true: wohnt er in Hamburg oder in Lübeck?; with entweder for emphasis.^[11][4]
2. Or, also called: joins two names for the same thing.^[11]
3. Or: joins options between which one must choose.^[11]
4. In oder so, puts the preceding statement in doubt: or something like that.^[11]
5. Or else, otherwise: names a possible consequence.^[11][4]
6. Introduces a question that anticipates an objection the speaker does not expect.^[11][4]

Particle

1. (colloquial, sentence-final) Right?, isn't it?: asks for agreement.^[11][1][7]

Related words

• aber
• weder
• ob
• doch
• English or

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Lexer, Matthias (1872–1878), Mittelhochdeutsches Handwörterbuch, 3 vols., Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 2, 140
3. ^ a b c d e f Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 13, 1148
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 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. 2, 950
6. ^ a b c Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2014), 5th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin / Mannheim / Zürich: Dudenverlag
7. ^ a b c Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
8. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
9. ^ Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 244
10. ^ Anderson, Robert R.; Goebel, Ulrich; Reichmann, Oskar, eds. (1989–), Frühneuhochdeutsches Wörterbuch, Berlin / New York: De Gruyter; FWB-online, fwb-online.de
11. ^ a b c d e f g Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag