Etymologically
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stammen

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Pronunciation

  • /ˈʃtamən/, [ˈʃtamn̩][1]

Forms

stammen (third-person singular present stammt, past tense stammte, past participle gestammt, auxiliary haben)[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German stammen (“to descend”), formed from Stamm “stem, tribe”.[2][3][4][5] That noun is Middle High German stam, Old High German stam, Old Saxon stamn, which Kluge traces to Proto-West Germanic *stamna- (“stem, stem-post”), also in Old English stefn and stemn.[4][1] The same word is Dutch stam and English stem.[4][6]

Kluge derives the noun from stehen, so that it first meant something like “that which stands, an upright”.[4] Pfeifer and the Duden dictionary connect it likewise with the root Proto-Indo-European *stā- (“to stand”), but only as probable, and compare Ancient Greek στάμνος (stámnos, “jar”), properly a standing vessel, Old Irish tamun (“tree trunk”) and Tocharian B stām (“tree”).[3][7][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Middle High German stammen meant “to descend, originate”;[8][9] Lexer and the Grimms' dictionary quote it from Lohengrin, of a man descended from the emperor Henry.[8][9]

Semantic evolution

The verb has always meant “to have one's origin”, from the image of branches growing out of one trunk.[10][3] Adelung, around 1800, used it with the auxiliary sein and noted that in ordinary speech the compounds abstammen and herstammen were more usual than the simple verb; an Italian–German dictionary of 1702 had already said the same.[10][9] Today it takes haben.[2][1]

Abstammen and the noun Abstammung are recorded from the 17th century, and the participle angestammt “inherited, ancestral” from the 16th, at first as Low German ahngestemmet.[3][7] The Early New High German verb could also mean “to bequeath”.[11]

Timeline

  • Middle High German – stammen “to descend” appears in Lohengrin.[8][9]
  • 16th century – The participle angestammt is first recorded, as Low German ahngestemmet.[3][7]
  • 17th century – abstammen and Abstammung appear.[3][7]
  • 1702 – Kramer's dictionary notes that the simple verb is less used than its compounds.[9]

Meanings

Verb

  1. To come from a place, to originate there: Diese Orangen stammen aus Spanien.[2][1]
  2. To date from a time: Die Kirche stammt aus dem Mittelalter.[2]
  3. To descend from a family or background: Er stammt aus einer Bauernfamilie.[2][1]
  4. To go back to someone, to have been said, made or done by them: Von wem stammt dieses Gedicht?[2]
  5. To have been taken or obtained from something: Das Zitat stammt aus einem Brief.[2][1]

Word family

  • abstammen
  • Abstammung
  • herstammen
  • angestammt

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 Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
  3. ^ a b c d e f 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 e Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 875
  5. ^ Lexer, Matthias (1872–1878), Mittelhochdeutsches Handwörterbuch, 3 vols., Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities
  6. ^ Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
  7. ^ a b c d Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag, p. 811
  8. ^ a b c Lexer, Matthias (1872–1878), Mittelhochdeutsches Handwörterbuch, 3 vols., Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 2, 1133
  9. ^ a b c d e Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 17, 652
  10. ^ a b Adelung, Johann Christoph (1793–1801), Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart, 2nd ed., 4 vols., Leipzig: Breitkopf
  11. ^ Anderson, Robert R.; Goebel, Ulrich; Reichmann, Oskar, eds. (1989–), Frühneuhochdeutsches Wörterbuch, Berlin / New York: De Gruyter; FWB-online, fwb-online.de