sagen

Forms

sagen (third-person singular present sagt, past tense sagte, past participle gesagt, auxiliary haben)^[1] Middle High German often used contracted forms: seist, seit, seite, geseit for sagest, saget, sagete, gesaget.^[2] Such forms survive into Early New High German, and Swiss German still has er seit “he says”.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German sagen, inherited from Old High German sagēn, inherited from Proto-Germanic *sagēn (“to say”).^[4][5][6] The other West Germanic and Norse forms go back to a variant with a j-suffix that caused umlaut, Proto-Germanic *sagjaną: Old Saxon seggian, Old English secgan, Old Frisian sedza and Old Norse segja, and today Dutch zeggen, English say and Swedish säga.^[5][4][7]

It continues the European root Proto-Indo-European *sekʷ- (“to say”), also found in Latin inquit (“he says”), Old Irish insce (“speech”), Lithuanian sakýti (“to say, tell”) and Ancient Greek ἐννέπω (ennépō, “to tell, proclaim”).^[4][5][8] Elsewhere the root means “to follow”, and Kluge suggests that the starting point was “to follow a sequence”, hence “to narrate”, as with erzählen from Zahl.^[4] Pfeifer starts from “to scent, track” (of a hunting dog), which led on the one hand to “show, announce, say” and on the other to “follow”; he therefore also connects the forms under sehen.^[5] The Duden likewise explains it as “let see, show” and relates it to that verb.^[9][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German sagēn is recorded from glosses of about 765 on, and is common in Otfrid, Tatian and Notker, meaning “to say, tell, narrate, proclaim, report, assert”.^[6][4]

Semantic evolution

Paul notes that, apart from fixed phrases such as gesagt, getan “no sooner said than done”, sagen differs from sprechen and reden in naming a one-way utterance together with its content.^[11] Adelung, around 1800, records that in everyday speech it could be used of any sound at all (das sagte patsch!).^[12]

Several prefixed verbs changed their meaning on the way: untersagen meant “to discuss, report” in Old High German and took the sense “to forbid” in Middle High German under the influence of Latin interdicere;^[5][9] versagen meant “to refuse, deny” and only later “to fail”, and the noun Versager meant “slanderer” in the 16th century before it came to mean “failure”.^[5]

Timeline

• c. 765 – Old High German sagēn appears in glosses.^[6]
• 9th century – The prefixed verbs bisagēn, untarsagēn and firsagēn are recorded.^[5]
• 10th century – anasagēn “to object, accuse” is recorded.^[5]
• 15th century – The nouns Aussage and Zusage appear.^[5]
• 16th century – Versager is recorded in the sense “slanderer”.^[5]
• 17th century – Entsagung “renunciation” appears.^[5]

Meanings

Verb

1. To say, utter words or sentences: Ja sagen, was hat sie gesagt?.^[10][1]
2. To tell, let someone know.^[10][1]
3. To use a word or expression in one's speech: sagst du Rotkohl oder Rotkraut?.^[10]
4. To call something by a certain name: zu einem Fotoapparat Kamera sagen.^[10]
5. To mean something to someone, to ring a bell.^[1]
6. (reflexive) To think to oneself.^[5][13]

Word family

• absagen
• ansagen
• aussagen
• besagen
• entsagen
• unsäglich
• untersagen
• versagen
• zusagen
• Entsagung
• aufsagen
• Sage
• unsagbar
• Versager
• Absage
• Aussage
• Zusage

Related words

• Saga
• sehen
• English say

Usage notes

Sage und schreibe “believe it or not, no less than” emphasises a surprising amount: er hat mich sage und schreibe eine Stunde warten lassen.^[10] Sagen wir introduces an estimate or an example.^[10]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f 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, 571
3. ^ Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 14, 1650
4. ^ a b c d e Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 782
5. ^ 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
6. ^ a b c Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
7. ^ Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
8. ^ Wahrig-Burfeind, Renate, ed., Wahrig Herkunftswörterbuch, Gütersloh / München: Wissen Media Verlag; online edition at wissen.de
9. ^ a b Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2014), 5th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin / Mannheim / Zürich: Dudenverlag
10. ^ a b c d e f g Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
11. ^ Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
12. ^ Adelung, Johann Christoph (1793–1801), Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart, 2nd ed., 4 vols., Leipzig: Breitkopf
13. ^ Wiktionary, das freie Wörterbuch (German Wiktionary), de.wiktionary.org