schaffen

Forms

schaffen (class 6 strong, third-person singular present schafft, past tense schuf, past participle geschaffen, auxiliary haben)^[1] In the senses “to manage, carry, work” it is weak: schaffte, geschafft.^[1][2] Old High German still had umlaut in the present (skeffis, skeffit); the forms without it have prevailed since Middle High German, under the influence of the weak verb.^[3][4] The past was written schuf or schuff until schuf became general in the later 18th century.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German schaffen, inherited from Old High German skephen (“to create, make, shape”), inherited from Proto-West Germanic *skappjan, inherited from Proto-Germanic *skapjaną (“to create, shape”).^[5][1][6] The same strong verb is Gothic 𐌲𐌰𐍃𐌺𐌰𐍀𐌾𐌰𐌽 (gaskapjan, “to create”), Old Norse skepja, Old English scieppan, Old Frisian skeppa and Old Saxon skeppian.^[5][7][6]

Kluge separates three strands.^[5] The old strong verb had a present in /-j-/; this present later got a weak past and became schöpfen, while the strong past scuof and participle giscaffan got a new regular present, the modern verb.^[5][4][6] Beside it stood a weak verb Old High German scaffōn (“to arrange, order, make”), like Old Norse skapa, whose present fell together with that of the strong verb in Middle High German.^[5][7][8] The strands cannot always be told apart, and the clear split of meaning between strong and weak forms is modern.^[5][8][1] The Old High German Dictionary finds no evidence for such a strong present in Old High German itself.^[9] English shape, with its old strong participle, has the same double conjugation.^[7]

Pfeifer and the Duden take the first sense to have been “to carve, work with a scraper”, linking the verb with schaben, Schaft and Scheffel and a root Proto-Indo-European *(s)kā̆b(h)- (“to cut with a sharp tool”).^[7][8] Kluge compares a family just as hard to delimit in Indo-Iranian, represented by an Old Indic verb meaning “to fasten, prop”, whose senses also belong to woodworking, and by Khotanese ṡkīm- (“to make, create”).^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German skephen “to create, make, shape, order” and skaffōn “to create, form, arrange, decree” are both recorded in glosses from about 765, then in Isidor, the Tatian, Otfrid, Notker, the Murbach Hymns and Williram.^[10][11][5] The strong verb could also mean “to draw water”.^[7]

Semantic evolution

The strong verb took the sense of divine and artistic creation, as in Luther's Am anfang schuff Gott Himel vnd Erden (Genesis 1:1) and Wieland's schuf Rafael seine Galathee.^[4] The nouns Schöpfer (already Old High German), Geschöpf (around 1500) and Schöpfung belong to the old present.^[8][5] The participle gave wie geschaffen für “as if made for”.^[4][2]

The weak verb kept the senses “to arrange, order, get done”: in Bavarian and Austrian it meant “to order, command”, from which comes the legal word Schöffe, and Adelung found Was schaffen sie? “what are your orders?” strange to High German ears.^[8][5][12] In the south-west it means simply “to work”.^[5][2] The modern colloquial senses “to manage, cope with” and “to wear out” developed from “to get done”.^[2] Compounds formed on the weak verb include abschaffen (Middle High German), anschaffen and beschaffen (15th century) and herbeischaffen (17th century).^[8] The word was borrowed into Dutch as schaffen (1350), and into Danish and Faroese.^[13][1]

Timeline

• c. 765 – Old High German skephen and skaffōn appear in glosses.^[10]
• Middle High German – abeschaffen “to do away with” appears.^[8]
• 1350 – Dutch schaffen “to procure” is recorded.^[13]
• 15th century – anschaffen and beschaffen appear.^[8]
• c. 1500 – Geschöpf “creature” is formed.^[8]
• 16th century – erschaffen “to create” appears.^[8]
• Later 18th century – The past schuf becomes general.^[3]

Meanings

Verb

1. (strong) To create, to call into being: Gott schuf die Welt.^[2][1]
2. (strong) Of an artist: to create, produce a work: Der Bildhauer schuf eine Bronzefigur.^[2][1]
3. (strong, sometimes weak) To bring about, establish: neue Stellen schaffen, Ordnung schaffen, Abhilfe schaffen.^[2][1]
4. (weak) To manage, to accomplish;^[2][1] es schaffen “to make it”;^[2][1] (colloquial) to catch a train, to pass an exam.^[2][1]
5. (weak, colloquial) To wear out, exhaust: Der lange Tag hat mich geschafft.^[2]
6. (weak) To take, carry somewhere: die Kisten auf den Dachboden schaffen.^[2][1]
7. (weak, regional, especially southern Germany, Switzerland and Austria) To work.^[2][1]

Word family

• erschaffen
• Schöpfer
• Geschöpf
• Schöpfung
• Schaffen
• abschaffen
• anschaffen
• beschaffen
• verschaffen
• herbeischaffen
• wegschaffen
• Schaffner
• Geschäft
• rechtschaffen

Related words

• schöpfen
• schaben
• Schöffe
• -schaft
• English shape

Usage notes

Several fixed phrases belong to the weak verb: sich an etwas zu schaffen machen “to busy oneself with something”, jemandem zu schaffen machen “to give someone trouble”, and mit etwas nichts zu schaffen haben “to have nothing to do with something”.^[2] Frohes Schaffen! is a jocular wish for someone setting to work.^[2][1] In the sense “to acquire” both participles are found: ein Vermögen geschaffen or geschafft.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
3. ^ a b c Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 14, 2016
4. ^ a b c d 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 h i j k Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 792
6. ^ a b c Seebold, Elmar (1970), Vergleichendes und etymologisches Wörterbuch der germanischen starken Verben, The Hague / Paris: Mouton
7. ^ a b c d e Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag
9. ^ Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch (1952–), founded by Elisabeth Karg-Gasterstädt and Theodor Frings, Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag / De Gruyter; online awb.saw-leipzig.de, p. 8, 992
10. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
11. ^ Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 284
12. ^ Adelung, Johann Christoph (1793–1801), Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart, 2nd ed., 4 vols., Leipzig: Breitkopf
13. ^ a b Lehnwortportal Deutsch (2012–), Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim, lwp.ids-mannheim.de