Etymologically
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so

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Pronunciation

  • /zoː/, /soː/[1]
  • Germany: /zɔ/[1]
  • Austria, Southern-Germany, Switzerland: /sɔ/[1]

Forms

so[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German sō, inherited from Old High German sō, inherited from Proto-West Germanic *swā, inherited from Proto-Germanic *swē (“as, like, so”).[2][1][3] Kluge sets up *swǣ, and Wiktionary gives *swa beside the long form.[2][1] The same adverb is Gothic 𐍃𐍅𐌰 (swa, “so, thus”) with its ablaut partner 𐍃𐍅𐌴 (swē, “as, like”), Old Norse svá, Old English swā, Old Saxon sō and Old Frisian sā, and today Dutch zo, English so, Swedish så and Icelandic svo.[2][4][3]

Outside Germanic, Kluge compares Ancient Greek ὥς (hṓs, “as, like”), which follows the word it qualifies, and Old Latin suad (“so”).[2] Pfeifer adds Latin sī (“if”), originally “so”, as still in sīc (“so, thus”), and refers all of them to different ablaut grades of Proto-Indo-European *su̯e- (“so”), which he connects with the pronoun stem of sich, properly “apart, for oneself”.[4] Kroonen likewise derives the adverb from the root meaning “his own, self”,[3] while Wiktionary calls the source uncertain and notes that Dunkel reconstructs a separate particle *swa “thus, like”.[1] Horn proposed in 1929 a blend of the demonstrative Proto-Indo-European *sod with the interrogative Proto-Indo-European *ku̯od.[4][5]

Kluge also finds the loss of the /w/ in German unexplained.[2] Jacob Grimm thought that the /w/ became a vowel and coloured the following one, and Paul suggests an assimilation of the /w/ to the vowel.[6][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German sō is recorded from the 8th century in almost every text, with a broad range of uses: “so, in this way, likewise”, but also as a conjunction “when, as, if, after, as soon as, because”.[2][7]

Semantic evolution

Duden describes so as at first an adverb meaning “in this way”, which developed the senses “such, as follows, to this degree, about”, and soon became a conjunction meaning “then, therefore”, often in the compound also.[8] Already in Old High German it took up a preceding conditional, temporal or causal clause at the head of the main clause, as in Luther's Wenn du aber Almosen gibst / So las deine lincke … “but when you give alms, then let your left [hand]” ….[5]

Middle High German usually has sō, but also sā, mostly in sources from central Germany.[6] Old High German phrases such as sō hwer “whoever” merged in Middle High German into swer and swaʒ, which lost their initial /s/ in New High German.[6] As a relative pronoun so was common in Luther's Bible, Die Heiligen, so auf Erden sind;[9] Adelung defended it against critics who wanted it banished.[9] It is now obsolete in this use.[1]

Many adverbs and conjunctions grew out of phrases with so: sofern from Middle High German sō verre, written so fern by Luther in the 16th century and together in the 18th, sofort in the 16th century, first in the north, sogar from so gar “so completely” and sogleich in the 17th and 18th centuries.[4] sozusagen imitates the Latin phrase ut ita dicam.[5] The phrase und so weiter was taken into English in 1885.[10]

Timeline

  • 8th century – Old High German sō is recorded.[2]
  • 1060–1065 – Middle High German sō appears in Williram's commentary on the Song of Songs.[11]
  • 1296 – A Strasbourg document uses the central German form sa.[6]
  • 16th century – Luther writes so fern;[4] sofort appears.[4]
  • 17th century – sogar is written as one word.[4]
  • 18th century – sofern and sogleich are written as one word.[4]
  • 1885 – und so weiter is first recorded in English.[10]

Meanings

Adverb

  1. In this way, thus, like this or that.[1][4]
  2. To such a degree, so, that: so müde.[1][4]
  3. As, in comparisons with wie: so alt wie ich.[1]
  4. (colloquial) roughly, about: so gegen acht.[1]
  5. (colloquial) A filler or intensifier with little meaning of its own; also standing alone as a closing remark or question: So!, So?.[1][4]

Conjunction

  1. So, therefore, then, introducing a consequence.[1][4]
  2. (archaic, legal or regional) If.[1][4]

Particle

  1. (colloquial) Introducing reported words or a reaction, like English “be like”.[1]

Pronoun

  1. (obsolete) Who, which, that, as a relative.[1][9]

Word family

Usage notes

Paul notes Herr Soundso as a stand-in for a name that is unknown or not to be given.[5]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 855
  3. ^ a b c Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m 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 e Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
  6. ^ 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. 16, 1341
  7. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
  8. ^ Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag, p. 789
  9. ^ a b c Adelung, Johann Christoph (1793–1801), Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart, 2nd ed., 4 vols., Leipzig: Breitkopf, p. 4, 117
  10. ^ a b Lehnwortportal Deutsch (2012–), Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim, lwp.ids-mannheim.de
  11. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling