Etymologically
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sechs

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Pronunciation

  • Germany: /zɛks/[1]
  • /sɛks/[1]
  • Austria, Southern-Germany, Switzerland: [z̥ɛɡ̥s][1]

Forms

sechs (cardinal number)[1] As a noun it is die Sechs, plural Sechsen.[1][2] The older written language also used the form sechse, which Adelung still recorded and which survives regionally.[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German sehs, inherited from Old High German sehs, inherited from Proto-West Germanic *sehs, inherited from Proto-Germanic *sehs (“six”).[4][5][6][1] The same numeral is Gothic 𐍃𐌰𐌹𐌷𐍃 (saíhs), Old Norse sex, Old English siex, Old Frisian sex and Old Saxon sehs, and today Dutch zes, English six and Swedish sex.[4][5][7][8]

It is the Indo-European word for “six”.[7][4] A form Proto-Indo-European *seḱs is continued in Sanskrit षष् (ṣáṣ), Tocharian A ṣäk, Tocharian B ṣkas, Latin sex, Lithuanian šešì and Old Church Slavonic шесть (šestĭ), while Avestan xšuuaš, Ancient Greek ἕξ (héx) (dialectal ϝέξ (wéx)), Old Irish sé, Welsh chwech and Old Armenian վեց (vecʿ) presuppose *sweḱs.[4][7][1] Since neither form can be derived from the other, the original shape is disputed: Kluge lists a simplification of the second, a blend of *weḱs with the first, and a starting point *ksweḱs, and concludes that no further etymology is possible.[4] Pfeifer also reckons with several variants, the Slavic form requiring *kseḱs; the Old Church Slavonic word is an abstract noun, properly “a set of six”.[5] Kroonen takes *ueks as the oldest form, because of the ordinal Old Prussian uschts, and thinks the initial /s/ was taken over from the word for “seven”.[6]

The Germanic /x/ before /s/, still written ⟨ch⟩, has been pronounced /k/ since early times, as in Fuchs and Ochse;[9] Old High German already wrote ⟨x⟩ now and then.[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German sehs is recorded from the 8th century, first in the Abrogans glossary and then in Isidor, the Benedictine Rule, Tatian, Otfrid and Notker.[4][8][10] It stayed uninflected before a noun, but was declined as an i-stem when it followed its noun or stood alone.[8]

Semantic evolution

From Luther's sechs tage soltu erbeiten (Exodus 20:9) came sechs Tage for a working week, and sechs Monate meant half a year.[11] Six on the dice and in cards was a common use, and today sechs Richtige are six correct numbers in the lottery.[11] The noun die Sechs served in mild oaths, bei meiner Sechs, recorded by Adelung and used by Goethe, and it is the worst mark in German schools.[3][11][1] Sechser was a coin worth six pfennigs from the end of the 15th century, and in Berlin later the five-pfennig piece.[11][5]

In sechzehn and sechzig the final -s merged early with the initial z- of zehn and -zig, though Schiller still wrote sechszehn and sechszig.[5][11] The spelling sex became more frequent from the 14th century, and a form ses appears as a gamblers' word under Romance influence.[9]

Timeline

  • 8th century – Old High German sehs appears in the Abrogans glossary.[4][8]
  • 9th century – The ordinal sehsto and sehszug “sixty” are recorded.[5]
  • c. 1000 – Seh(s)zehan “sixteen” is recorded.[5]
  • 1497 – The spelling sex in a Rhenish legal record.[9]
  • End of the 15th century – Sechser names a six-pfennig coin.[11]
  • 19th century – The card game Sechsundsechzig is named after the points needed to win.[12]

Meanings

Numeral

  1. six; also six o'clock: wir treffen uns um sechs.[2][1][13]

Noun

  1. The figure 6.[2][1]
  2. A playing card with six pips, or a six thrown with a die.[2][13]
  3. The lowest mark in German schools, “insufficient”.[2][1]
  4. (colloquial) The tram or bus of route 6.[2]

Word family

  • sechste
  • Sechstel
  • Sechser
  • sechzehn
  • sechzig
  • Sechsundsechzig

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
  3. ^ a b Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 15, 2780
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 837
  5. ^ a b c d e f g 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 Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  7. ^ a b c Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  8. ^ a b c d Lloyd, Albert L.; Springer, Otto; Lühr, Rosemarie, et al. (1988–), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; online ewa.saw-leipzig.de, p. 7, 1036
  9. ^ 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, 2774
  10. ^ Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 275
  11. ^ 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
  12. ^ Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag, p. 769
  13. ^ a b Wiktionary, das freie Wörterbuch (German Wiktionary), de.wiktionary.org