Etymologically
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scheinen

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Pronunciation

  • Germany: /ˈʃaɪnən/[1]
  • /ˈʃaɪnɛn/[1]
  • Austria, Southern-Germany, Switzerland: [ˈʃaɛ̯-][1]

Forms

scheinen (class 1 strong, third-person singular present scheint, past tense schien, past participle geschienen or (obsolete or dialectal) gescheint, auxiliary haben)[1] The regular past singular schein was still widespread in the 16th century, beside schien.[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German schīnen, inherited from Old High German skīnan, inherited from Proto-West Germanic *skīnan, inherited from Proto-Germanic *skīnaną (“to shine”).[3][4][1] The same verb is Gothic 𐍃𐌺𐌴𐌹𐌽𐌰𐌽 (skeinan), Old Norse skína, Old English scīnan, Old Frisian skīna and Old Saxon skīnan, and it survives as English shine.[3][5][4] The /n/ of the present spread through the whole verb;[2][5] Kroonen derives the strong verb from an older nasal present.[2][5]

Outside Germanic, Kluge compares Old Church Slavonic сиꙗти (sijati, “to shine”) and, more doubtfully, Latin scintilla (“spark”).[3] Pfeifer and the Duden place it under a root Proto-Indo-European *sk̑āi- (“to shimmer dully; shadow”), with Ancient Greek σκιά (skiá, “shadow”), Sanskrit छाया (chāyā́, “shadow, reflection”) and сѣнь (sěnĭ, “shadow”), and Kroonen also starts from a shadow word of this root.[4][6][5] The same root is behind Schemen, schimmern and Schimmel.[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German skīnan is recorded from the 8th century, in glosses and in the Tatian, Otfrid and Notker, meaning “to shine, gleam, sparkle” and also “to appear, become visible, be manifest”.[3][7] It referred above all to the shining of the heavenly bodies, as in Notker's sentence that the sun shines first on the mountains (an die berga scînet diu sunna ze êrist).[4][8]

Semantic evolution

Already in Old High German the verb also meant “to come into view, become visible”, a sense for which modern German uses only erscheinen.[4][6] From the phrase mir scheint (Middle High German eʒ schînet mir “it seems to me”) and out of comparisons meaning “to look like something without being it” came the modern sense “to give the impression, to seem”.[4][8] In the 18th century constructions with clauses grew up (es scheint, dass…, es scheint mir, als…), and scheinen was often set against sein, as in Lessing's Die Menschen sind nicht immer, was sie scheinen.[8]

Adelung, around 1800, noted that the verb was no longer used of fire, lightning, stars or a lamp, as in older German, though the noun Schein still was.[9] The words wahrscheinlich, anscheinend, scheinbar and scheinheilig continue the sense of a mere appearance.[3]

Timeline

  • 8th century – Old High German skīnan appears in glosses.[3][7]
  • Around 1000 – Notker writes of the sun shining on the mountains.[8]
  • Middle High German – eʒ schînet mir “it seems to me” is in use.[4]
  • 16th century – The old past schein is still widespread beside schien.[2]
  • 17th century – wahrscheinlich is formed after Dutch waarschijnlijk.[4]
  • 18th century – Constructions such as es scheint, dass develop.[8]

Meanings

Verb

  1. Of a light, to shine, to send out light that falls somewhere.[10][1]
  2. Of a heavenly body, to be visible in the sky and give light: Heute scheint die Sonne.[10][11]
  3. Of light, to fall on something.[10]
  4. (rare) To gleam, glint.[10]
  5. To seem, to give a particular impression, often with an infinitive with zu or impersonally with a clause: Er scheint müde zu sein.[10][1]

Word family

  • scheinbar
  • erscheinen
  • Schein
  • anscheinend
  • scheinheilig
  • Erscheinung
  • bescheinigen
  • Scheinwerfer
  • unscheinbar

Usage notes

Scheint's (regional, especially southern Germany and Switzerland) means “apparently”.[10]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 14, 2441
  3. ^ a b c d e f Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 799
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h 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 Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  6. ^ a b c Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2014), 5th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin / Mannheim / Zürich: Dudenverlag, p. 731
  7. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
  8. ^ a b c d e Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
  9. ^ Adelung, Johann Christoph (1793–1801), Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart, 2nd ed., 4 vols., Leipzig: Breitkopf
  10. ^ a b c d e f Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
  11. ^ Wiktionary, das freie Wörterbuch (German Wiktionary), de.wiktionary.org