Etymologically
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prüfen

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Pronunciation

  • /ˈpʁyːfn̩/, /ˈpʁyːfən/[1]

Forms

prüfen (third-person singular present prüft, past tense prüfte, past participle geprüft, auxiliary haben)[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German prüeven, also spelled brüeven and pruoven, borrowed from Old French prover (“to prove, test”), which continues Latin probō (“to test, examine; to approve”).[2][3][4] The Latin verb is formed from the adjective probus (“good, upright”).[5][6] Kluge and Paul place the borrowing in the 12th century.[2][4]

Pfeifer and Duden argue that the word came in earlier than its first records suggest: the diphthong of the Middle High German verb, with the past tense pruovte without umlaut, points to an early loan from Vulgar Latin *prōvō with a long vowel, the form behind Italian provare and the Old French verb.[5][6] Wiktionary sets up Proto-West Germanic *prōfijan on the same grounds, but notes that the late attestation favours a loan from Old French, perhaps through Middle Dutch proeven, which would make the umlaut analogical.[1] Middle Low German, Old Norse and Old English took the word directly from Latin.[4] The same word is Dutch proeven, English prove, Swedish pröva and Icelandic prófa.[2] Other words from the Latin verb came into German later and remain recognisable as loans: Probe, probieren and approbiert.[3][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Grimms' dictionary finds the verb first in the Millstätter Genesis, at the end of the 11th century.[7] In Middle High German it had a wide range of senses: to consider and weigh up, to perceive, to prove or show, to reckon and estimate, to test, and even to bring about or cause.[5][6][8]

Semantic evolution

Most of the old senses have died out.[9] Adelung lists “to approve”, “to prove”, “to feel, experience” and “to consider” as obsolete in his time, though Upper German still said that one had geprüft the cold, meaning felt it; he quotes a book on nature of 1483 for the sense “to perceive”.[9] Already in Middle High German the verbal noun Prüfung was formed, and the agent noun Prüfer is also old.[2][5]

The word long belonged to the north and centre of the German-speaking area.[7] The Upper German dialects used probieren and proben instead, and knew prüfen “to examine” only from school language;[7] Luther's prüfen was replaced in southern Bible printings by probieren, bewären or versuchen.[7] A Prüfstein was first a touchstone for testing the fineness of gold and silver;[5][4] Luther already uses it figuratively, of wisdom as a hard touchstone.[5][4] Prüfling, a candidate in an examination, appears in school use in 1847.[4] Schiller's line Drum prüfe, wer sich ewig bindet (“so let whoever binds himself for ever test first”), from the Lied von der Glocke, became a winged word.[4]

Pfeffer and Cannon record English prove from 1833 in the German sense “to test a medicine on a healthy person”.[10]

Timeline

  • End of the 11th century – First record, in the Millstätter Genesis.[7]
  • 12th century – Kluge and Paul date the borrowing from Old French.[2][4]
  • 13th century – The verbal noun prüefunge is formed.[2]
  • 16th century – Prüfstein, a touchstone for gold and silver, is recorded.[5]
  • 1847 – Prüfling is first used in schools.[4]

Meanings

Verb

  1. To test a device, material or product for its quality or working order: Der Techniker prüft die Bremsen.[11][1]
  2. To check a document or a matter for correctness: Die Beamtin prüfte unsere Ausweise.[11][1]
  3. To look carefully at an offer to see whether it is worth taking.[11]
  4. To try to find out the state or properties of something, as by tasting or touching: Sie prüfte mit der Hand, ob das Bad warm genug war.[11]
  5. To observe or test a person closely in order to judge them;[11] sich prüfen, to examine oneself.[11]
  6. To examine a pupil or candidate by questions or set tasks: Morgen werden wir in Chemie geprüft.[11][1][12]
  7. (formal) Of fate or God, to try someone with hardship: Der Krieg hat die Familie hart geprüft..[11][1]
  8. (sports) To force an opponent to show all their skill.[11]

Word family

  • Prüfung
  • abprüfen
  • nachprüfen
  • überprüfen
  • Prüfer
  • Prüfling
  • Prüfstein
  • Probe
  • probieren
  • proben
  • English prove

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g 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. 729
  3. ^ a b Wahrig-Burfeind, Renate, ed., Wahrig Herkunftswörterbuch, Gütersloh / München: Wissen Media Verlag; online edition at wissen.de
  4. ^ 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
  5. ^ a b c d e f g Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
  6. ^ a b c d Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag, p. 657
  7. ^ a b c d e Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 13, 2182
  8. ^ 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
  10. ^ Lehnwortportal Deutsch (2012–), Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim, lwp.ids-mannheim.de
  11. ^ a b c d e f g h i Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
  12. ^ Wiktionary, das freie Wörterbuch (German Wiktionary), de.wiktionary.org