tief

Forms

tief (strong nominative masculine singular tiefer, comparative tiefer, superlative am tiefsten)^[1] Middle High German had tief beside tiuf; the Grimms derive the standard pronunciation with a long vowel from Central German tîf.^[2] The regular form tiufe of the noun survives in the mining word Teufe “depth”.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German tief, inherited from Old High German tiof, inherited from Proto-West Germanic *deup, inherited from Proto-Germanic *deupaz (“deep”).^[4][3][5][1] The same adjective is Gothic 𐌳𐌹𐌿𐍀𐍃 (diups), Old Norse djúpr, Old English dēop, Old Frisian diāp and Old Saxon diop, and it continues in Dutch diep, English deep and Swedish djup.^[4][3][5]

Outside Germanic it is related to Lithuanian dubùs (“hollow, deep”), Old Irish domain (“deep”) and Welsh dwfn (“deep”), from a root Proto-Indo-European *dʰewbʰ- (“deep, hollow”).^[4][3][6][5] Kroonen adds Tocharian B tapre (“high”) and offers two derivations: an adjective beside the verbal family of Proto-Germanic *dūbaną (“to dive”), or a formation Proto-Indo-European *dʰewbʰ-nós whose /bʰn/ gave Germanic /pp/, later shortened.^[5] Kluge stresses that the final consonant of the root is ambiguous in all the languages and may have varied from the start, and notes the likeness of Ancient Greek δύω (dúō, “I sink, plunge”).^[4]

In German the root also underlies taufen, originally “to make deep”, tupfen and, with a nasal, Tümpel “a hollow”.^[6][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German tiof is first recorded in glosses of about 765, then in the Tatian, Otfrid, Notker and other texts, meaning “deep, unfathomable, low-lying” and also “weighty, significant”.^[7][8] The Tatian says of Jacob's well thiu fuzze teof ist (“the well is deep”, for Latin puteus altus est), and Otfrid ther puzz ist filu diofêr.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Paul sorts the senses by direction.^[9] Vertical depth is the oldest and gave figurative uses of grief and love, as in Walther's mines herzen tiefiu wunde (“my heart's deep wound”); with it go tief “low”, of a hanging branch, a low sun or a deep bow.^[9] Horizontal depth is as old: the Nibelungenlied has riders entering einen tiefen walt (“a deep forest”), and Adelung speaks of a house twenty ells deep from front to back.^[9]

Paul quotes from the dictionaries of Stieler, Kramer and Adelung the acoustic sense (tiefe Stimme, a deep voice), the intensifying use (tiefer Schmerz, tief bewegt) and the temporal one (bis in die tiefste Nacht).^[9] In Middle High German a tiefer wec was a sunken lane or a muddy road, and tiefiu rede profound talk.^[10] The compound tiefsinnig meant “shrewd, sly” at the end of the 16th century and took its present sense “profound, brooding” in the 18th;^[3][6] Tiefsinn is a back-formation of the mid-18th century, though Middle High German already had tiefer sin.^[3][6]

The noun Tief named a navigable channel in Low German coastal speech, and at the beginning of the 20th century an area of low air pressure.^[11][12][6] In Swiss usage tief can mean “low” of amounts and values.^[1]

Timeline

• c. 765 – Old High German tiof appears in glosses.^[7]
• 863–871 – Otfrid uses tiof and the adverb tiofo.^[7]
• c. 1200 – The Nibelungenlied speaks of einen tiefen walt “a deep forest”.^[9][13]
• End of the 16th century – tiefsinnig is recorded in the sense “shrewd, sly”.^[3]
• First half of the 18th century – tiefsinnig takes its present sense “profound, brooding”.^[3]
• Early 20th century – Tief comes to mean an area of low air pressure.^[6]

Meanings

Adjective

1. deep: reaching far down, with a long distance to the bottom: Der See ist an dieser Stelle sehr tief. With a measure after it: ein drei Meter tiefer Graben.^[14][1]
2. low: close to the ground or far down; also low on a scale: Die Schwalben fliegen tief. tiefe Temperaturen.^[14][1]
3. Of a dish: deep, not flat: ein tiefer Teller.^[14]
4. Reaching far back or far inward: ein tiefer Schrank, tief im Wald.^[14]
5. Far advanced in time; in the middle of: bis tief in die Nacht, im tiefen Winter.^[14]
6. Intense, strongly felt; with adjectives and verbs, “very, deeply”: tiefe Trauer, tief enttäuscht.^[14]
7. profound: going to the essential, not superficial: ein tiefer Gedanke.^[14][1]
8. Of a colour: intense, dark; of a voice or tone: low, deep: eine tiefe Stimme.^[14][15]
9. (Switzerland) Low in amount or value.^[1]

Word family

• Tief
• Tiefe
• vertiefen
• Untiefe
• tiefsinnig
• Tiefsinn
• tiefgründig
• tiefgreifend
• tiefschürfend
• abgrundtief
• zutiefst
• Tiefland
• Tiefsee

Related words

• Teufe
• taufen
• tauchen
• tupfen
• Tümpel

Usage notes

Stille Wasser sind tief (“still waters run deep”) is recorded by Stieler as stille wasser sind gern tief.^[2][1] Zu tief ins Glas schauen is to drink too much.^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 21, 480
3. ^ a b c d e f g h 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. 917
5. ^ a b c d Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
6. ^ a b c d e f Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag, p. 859
7. ^ a b c Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
8. ^ Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 331
9. ^ 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
10. ^ Lexer, Matthias (1872–1878), Mittelhochdeutsches Handwörterbuch, 3 vols., Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 2, 1432
11. ^ Adelung, Johann Christoph (1793–1801), Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart, 2nd ed., 4 vols., Leipzig: Breitkopf
12. ^ Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 21, 485
13. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
14. ^ a b c d e f g h Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
15. ^ Wiktionary, das freie Wörterbuch (German Wiktionary), de.wiktionary.org