Etymologically
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sehr

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Pronunciation

  • /zeːr/, [zeːɐ̯], /seːɐ̯/[1]
  • Germany: [zɛɐ̯][1]
  • Austria, Southern-Germany, Switzerland: [-ɛɐ̯][1]

Forms

sehr (comparative mehr, superlative am meisten)[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German sēre, inherited from Old High German sēro (“painfully”), the adverb of the adjective Old High German sēr (“sad, painful”), inherited from Proto-West Germanic *sair, inherited from Proto-Germanic *sairaz (“sore, painful”).[2][3][1] The same adjective is Old Norse sárr, Old English sār, Old Frisian sēr and Old Saxon sēr, and English sore and Dutch zeer continue it;[2][3] Old English also had the adverb sāre.[2][3] Beside it stood a noun “wound, pain”, as in Gothic 𐍃𐌰𐌹𐍂 (sair, “pain”), which had the same form as the adjective in Old High German, Middle High German and Old English.[2][3][4]

Kluge connects the adjective with a root Proto-Indo-European *sai- of western and northern Europe, from which come with other suffixes Old Irish sáeth (“trouble, pain, illness”), Latin saevus (“raging, fierce”) and Latvian sīvs (“sharp, cruel”).[2] Pfeifer sets up the root *sāi- (“pain, illness, to hurt”), from which the Germanic word is formed with an r-suffix.[3] The Duden dictionary calls the link with Latin and Old Irish probable.[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German sēro is recorded from the 9th century, in Otfrid and in the Paris conversations, meaning “sadly, painfully, hard”;[5][3] Schützeichel also gives “very”.[5][3] The Grimms note that Otfrid and the Old Saxon Heliand still use it only in the old concrete sense “painfully, grievously”.[6] The adjective sēr appears in the Old Alemannic Psalm fragments of the first half of the 9th century.[7]

Semantic evolution

Already in Middle High German the adverb was used to mark a high degree, so that sēre wunt meant “very much wounded” rather than only “painfully wounded”.[4][2] Paul describes the weakening from “painfully” to a general intensifier, at first only with verbs and later also with adjectives and adverbs, where it replaced the older viel.[8] Matthias Kramer still gave a comparative sehrer and a superlative am sehrsten; since then mehr and am meisten have served instead.[8]

The adjective and the noun died out in the standard language, but the adjective lives on in dialects in the sense “sore, chafed”, and the old meaning survives in the verb versehren “to injure”.[9][2]

Timeline

  • First half of the 9th century – The Old High German adjective sēr appears in the Old Alemannic Psalm fragments.[7]
  • 9th century – Otfrid uses the adverb sēro in the sense “painfully”.[3][6]
  • Middle High German – sēre is used as an intensifier.[2][4]
  • 1528 – The adjective sehr “sore” in a surgical handbook by Gersdorf.[9]

Meanings

Adverb

  1. Very, to a high degree, with adjectives and adverbs: Das Wasser ist heute sehr kalt.[10][1]
  2. Much, greatly, with verbs: Wir haben uns sehr über das Geschenk gefreut.[10][1]
  3. In set phrases of thanks and politeness: danke sehr, bitte sehr, and in letters Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren.[10][8]
  • versehren
  • English sore

Usage notes

Upper German speech does not use intensifying sehr much; it says arg, gar or recht instead, and Austrian German especially gar.[3][8]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 839
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i 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 Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag, p. 771
  5. ^ a b Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 278
  6. ^ a b Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 16, 160
  7. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
  8. ^ 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
  9. ^ a b Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 16, 163
  10. ^ a b c Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag