spielen

Forms

spielen (third-person singular present spielt, past tense spielte, past participle gespielt, auxiliary haben)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German spiln, inherited from Old High German spilōn, inherited from Proto-West Germanic *spilōn (“to play, to dance”), a verb formed from the noun Proto-West Germanic *spil (“game, play, dance”), which became Spiel.^[2][3][1] The same verb is Old Saxon spilon, Old Frisian spilia, Middle Low German spēlen and Middle Dutch spēlen, today Dutch spelen.^[2][3]

The noun and the verb are recorded only in continental West Germanic;^[3] Pfeifer considers Old English spilian, Swedish spela and Danish spille borrowings, and the Grimms' dictionary takes the late Icelandic spila of the 14th century to be a loan from German.^[3][4] The origin of the word is unknown.^[3][5][2] Kluge, Pfeifer and the Duden reckon that it first meant “to dance, to move about lively”.^[2][3][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German spilōn is recorded from the 8th century, earlier than the noun.^[2][3] In the Ludwigslied, Otfrid, Notker and the glosses it means “to play, to sport”, “to act”, “to move about, frolic, leap” and “to fight”, and with a genitive “to play a game”.^[7]

Semantic evolution

Middle High German spiln meant “to jest, enjoy oneself” with sports, tournaments, board games and dice, “to move lively, be merry” and “to make music”.^[3] The verb kept the old sense of lively movement longer than the noun, as in waves, lights or muscles that spielen;^[5] hence Spielraum, in the 18th century a technical word for the room a body has to move in.^[5][3] Hartmann von Aue already uses the present participle in the sense “effortlessly”, the use of modern spielend.^[8]

Luther speaks of playing comedies and tragedies.^[8] Until the 19th century the game stood in the genitive, as in Versteckens spielen “to play hide-and-seek”.^[8] Many prefixed verbs come from the stage or from cards: zuspielen “to pass to someone secretly” (17th century, probably from card games), sich abspielen “to take place” (early 19th century) and sich aufspielen “to show off” (19th century).^[3][5]

The verb passed into Czech as spíleti “to tease”,^[9] and English took spiel in 1859 for gambling talk.^[9]

Timeline

• 8th century – Old High German spilōn is recorded.^[2][3]
• 16th century – Luther uses spielen of performing plays.^[8]
• 16th century – aufspielen “to strike up music” is recorded.^[3]
• 17th century – zuspielen and the adverb spielend “easily” appear.^[3]
• 18th century – Spielraum is used as a technical term.^[3][5]
• Early 19th century – sich abspielen “to take place” is recorded.^[3]
• 1859 – English records spiel.^[9]

Meanings

Verb

1. (intransitive) To play, to occupy oneself with something for fun: die Kinder spielen im Garten.^[6][1]
2. (transitive) To play a game or sport: Karten spielen, Handball spielen.^[6][1]
3. (intransitive) To gamble, to take part in a game of chance.^[6]
4. To play a musical instrument or a piece of music.^[6][1]
5. To perform a role or a play; to act;^[6][1] (figurative) to pretend to be: den Helden spielen.^[6][1]
6. (intransitive) To be set in a time or place, of a story: der Film spielt in Wien.^[6][1]
7. (intransitive) To move lightly to and fro; of colours, to shade into another.^[6][8]

Word family

• abspielen
• anspielen
• Anspielung
• aufspielen
• ausspielen
• mitspielen
• verspielen
• vorspielen
• zuspielen
• spielend
• Spieler
• spielerisch
• Spielerei

Related words

• Spiel

Usage notes

Mit dem Feuer spielen “to play with fire” is recorded by Kramer, and Beziehungen spielen lassen is to pull strings.^[8]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 867
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
4. ^ Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 16, 2325
5. ^ a b c d e Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2007), 4th ed., Duden vol. 7, Mannheim: Dudenverlag
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
7. ^ Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 305
8. ^ 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
9. ^ a b c Lehnwortportal Deutsch (2012–), Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim, lwp.ids-mannheim.de