schwach

Forms

schwach (strong nominative masculine singular schwacher, comparative schwächer, superlative am schwächsten)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German swach (“bad, low, worthless; feeble”), inherited from Proto-West Germanic *swak.^[2][3][1] Old High German has no record of it;^[4][5] Köbler sets up an unattested Old High German *swah.^[4][5] The word is confined to German and Dutch: the same word is Middle Low German swak, Middle Dutch swac (“pliant, frail”) and Dutch zwak.^[2][3][6]

Kluge compares swāken (“to become weak, totter”) and dialectal Norwegian svaga (“to sway, dangle”), so that the first sense would have been “pliant, swaying”; it resembles schwanken and schwingen, but has no exact match elsewhere.^[2] Pfeifer and the Duden place it with the family of that verb, as a form without the nasal of Proto-Indo-European *su̯eng- (“to bend, swing”), that is Proto-Indo-European *su̯eg-;^[3][6][5] Pfeifer also cites Old Norse sveggja (“to swing to and fro”).^[3][6][5] Jacob Grimm had linked it with words for smell such as Old High German swehhan (“to smell, stink”), but the Grimms' dictionary itself prefers other explanations.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Kluge dates the word to the 13th century.^[2] Köbler's earliest dated text is a Servatius legend of about 1190, and the Middle High German word is found in the Nibelungenlied, Wolfram's Willehalm, Konrad von Würzburg and the Passional.^[7][8] It meant “bad, poor, of little worth, low, ignoble”: swach korn is poor grain, swachiu wæte shabby clothes, and ein swacher man a man of low rank.^[8][3]

Semantic evolution

Paul notes that at first the word meant “worthless, slight”; the modern sense, the opposite of stark, spread from phrases such as schwacher Leib “weak body” and schwacher Magen “weak stomach”, and took over a job done in Middle High German by krank.^[9] The Grimms' dictionary says that in newer German the sense “low, wretched, bad” gave way entirely to “lacking strength, not doing what is expected”.^[4] From there it became a general word of quantity, “thin” (a thin thread, weak coffee, a dilute solution, a faint light, a quiet voice), and of quality: Luther's Der Geist ist willig, aber das Fleisch ist schwach (Matthew 26:41) made it a word for moral frailty, and schwach im Glauben “weak in faith” is from Romans 14:1.^[9] The phrase schwache Seite “weak point” of character, current from the 18th century, was first military, of an inadequately fortified or covered side.^[9]

In grammar Jacob Grimm used schwach and stark for the two inflections of German verbs, nouns and adjectives, the weak one marked by an added -n;^[9] the English word weak took this grammatical sense in 1833.^[10] Russian borrowed it as швах (švax).^[1]

Timeline

• c. 1190 – Middle High German swach in a Servatius legend.^[7]
• 13th century – The word becomes current in Middle High German.^[2]
• 18th century – schwache Seite “weak point” of a person's character.^[9]
• 1833 – English weak is first used in this grammatical sense.^[10]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Physically weak, having little strength: Nach der Grippe war er noch sehr schwach.^[11][1]
2. Not working well, not resistant: ein schwaches Herz, schwache Nerven; figuratively ein schwacher Wille, a will that gives in easily.^[11]
3. Thin, not sturdy, not able to bear much load: Der Ast war zu schwach für die Schaukel.^[11]
4. Not numerous: eine schwache Beteiligung, a poor turnout.^[11]
5. Of low concentration, dilute: schwacher Tee.^[11][9]
6. Of low power or effectiveness: ein schwacher Motor.^[11]
7. Not good at something, or poor in quality: Sie ist schwach in Chemie;^[11] ein schwacher Film.^[11]
8. Faint, slight, not intense: ein schwacher Wind, eine schwache Hoffnung.^[11]
9. (grammar) Weak: of verbs, forming the past with a dental suffix; of nouns and adjectives, having -n in most forms.^[11][1]

Word family

• Schwachkopf
• Schwachsinn
• schwächen
• schwächlich
• Schwachstelle
• Schwäche
• Schwachheit
• Schwächling
• Schwachmatikus

Related words

• schwächeln
• schwanken
• schwingen

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 831
3. ^ 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
4. ^ 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. 15, 2148
5. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
6. ^ a b c Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag, p. 762
7. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
8. ^ a b Lexer, Matthias (1872–1878), Mittelhochdeutsches Handwörterbuch, 3 vols., Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 2, 1330
9. ^ a b c d e f Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
10. ^ a b Lehnwortportal Deutsch (2012–), Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim, lwp.ids-mannheim.de
11. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag