schwarz

Forms

schwarz (strong nominative masculine singular schwarzer, comparative schwärzer or schwarzer, superlative am schwärzesten or am schwarzesten)^[1] Middle High German had the comparatives swarzer and swerzer; modern standard German uses schwärzer, and the forms without umlaut are dialectal.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German swarz, inherited from Old High German swarz, inherited from Proto-West Germanic *swart, inherited from Proto-Germanic *swartaz (“black”).^[3][4][1] The same word is Old Saxon swart, Old Frisian swart, Old English sweart and Old Norse svartr, continued in Dutch zwart, Swedish svart and the dated English swart (“dark, swarthy”).^[3][4][5] Pfeifer and Orel list Gothic 𐍃𐍅𐌰𐍂𐍄𐍃 (swarts), while Kluge infers the adjective from Gothic 𐍃𐍅𐌰𐍂𐍄𐌹𐌶𐌻 (swartizl, “ink”).^[4][5][3] A zero-grade form is probably found in Old Norse sorti (“darkness, thick fog”) and Old Norse sortna (“to grow black”).^[3][4]

Outside Germanic it is compared with Latin sordēs (“dirt”) and Latin sordidus (“dirty”), so that the first sense would have been “dirt-coloured, dark”.^[3][4][6][7] Pfeifer reconstructs Proto-Indo-European *su̯ordos (“dirt-coloured, black”) on this basis,^[4] and Wiktionary gives the root as Proto-Indo-European *swerd- (“dirty, dark”),^[1] but Kluge treats the Latin comparison as only possible and calls the further origin unclear.^[3][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German swarz is recorded from the late 8th century in the Abrogans and other glosses, and then in the Tatian, Otfrid, the Murbach Hymns, Notker and Williram, meaning “black, dark-coloured” and glossing Latin ater, niger and fuscus.^[8][9][10]

Semantic evolution

The basic sense was “dark”, the opposite of white: the Nibelungenlied has swarz alsam ein kol “black as a coal”, Luther a sky black with clouds (1 Kings 18:45), and Matthias Claudius the line Der Wald steht schwarz und schweiget “the wood stands black and silent”.^[11] It named dark varieties, as in Schwarzbrot “rye bread” (14th century) and Schwarzwild “wild boar”, swarzwilt.^[4][6] The Schwarze Kunst “black art” meant printing from 1494 (Sebastian Brant), the schwarze Brett was the university notice board (1687, Thomasius), and the schwarze Tod the plague, after the black swellings on the bodies of the sick.^[11]

Black was the colour of mourning from Old High German on, and it came to signify misfortune and evil.^[11] From the black clerical dress, die Schwarzen named the clerical party in the 19th century, and later the conservative and Christian Democratic parties.^[11]

The sense “illegal, secret” comes from thieves' cant, where schwärzen meant “to smuggle” (18th century), probably first “to do something by night”.^[4][6] Pfeifer dates Schwarzmarkt and Schwarzhandel to the First World War or the inflation around 1923, first for illegal currency dealing and then for rationed goods; the same development appears later in English black market (about 1930?), Italian mercato nero (about 1940), French marché noir and Russian чёрный рынок (čórnyj rýnok), apparently after German.^[4] Colloquial schwarzfahren “to ride without a ticket” and schwarzhören belong here.^[6]

Timeline

• Late 8th century – Old High German swarz appears in the Abrogans glosses.^[8][10]
• 1060–1065 – Middle High German swarz is used by Williram.^[12]
• 14th century – First record of Schwarzbrot.^[4][6]
• 1494 – Sebastian Brant uses Schwarze Kunst for printing.^[11]
• 1687 – Thomasius mentions the schwartze Brett at Leipzig university.^[11]
• 18th century – Thieves' cant schwärzen “to smuggle”.^[4]
• 19th century – die Schwarzen names the clerical party.^[11]
• About 1923 – schwarz “illegal” spreads in Schwarzmarkt and Schwarzhandel.^[4]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Black, of the darkest colour, reflecting no light: ein schwarzer Mantel.^[13][1] Schwarz auf weiß means “in writing”.^[13]
2. Very dark: schwarze Johannisbeeren; of coffee, without milk: Ich trinke meinen Kaffee schwarz.^[13][1]
3. Having dark skin;^[13][1][14] Black (of people).^[13][1][14]
4. (colloquial) Dark with dirt: Nach der Gartenarbeit waren seine Finger ganz schwarz.^[13]
5. (colloquial, often derogatory) Shaped by Catholicism, mainly Catholic;^[13][1] (political jargon) Christian Democratic, conservative (in Germany the CDU/CSU, in Austria the ÖVP).^[13][1]
6. Ominous, gloomy; also wicked, evil: ein schwarzer Tag für die Firma.^[13][14]
7. (colloquial) Illegal, without official permission: Er hat jahrelang schwarz gearbeitet.^[13][1]
8. (card games) Having taken no trick: schwarz werden in skat, from an old cant sense “to have no money”.^[13][1]

Word family

• Schwärze
• schwärzen
• schwärzlich
• anschwärzen
• pechschwarz
• Schwarzbrot
• Schwarzwild
• Schwarzmarkt
• Schwarzarbeit
• schwarzsehen
• Schwarzer

Related words

• English swart

Usage notes

Goethe's Denn was man schwarz auf weiß besitzt, / Kann man getrost nach Hause tragen (“what one has in black and white one can take home with confidence”, Faust I, 1966–1967) is the source of the saying.^[11][13] Ins Schwarze treffen “to hit the bull's-eye”, the black centre of a target, is used of saying exactly the right thing.^[11]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 15, 2300
3. ^ a b c d e f Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 833
4. ^ 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
5. ^ a b Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
6. ^ a b c d e Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2014), 5th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin / Mannheim / Zürich: Dudenverlag, p. 765
7. ^ a b Wahrig-Burfeind, Renate, ed., Wahrig Herkunftswörterbuch, Gütersloh / München: Wissen Media Verlag; online edition at wissen.de
8. ^ a b Lloyd, Albert L.; Springer, Otto; Lühr, Rosemarie, et al. (1988–), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; online ewa.saw-leipzig.de, p. 8, 1483
9. ^ Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 324
10. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
11. ^ 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
12. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
13. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
14. ^ a b c Wiktionary, das freie Wörterbuch (German Wiktionary), de.wiktionary.org