Etymologically
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spielen

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Pronunciation

  • /ˈʃpiːlən/[1]

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

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