Etymologically
Log in

tot

This is the current revision of this entry, as edited by bogdan on 20 October 2026 at 20:19. This address is a permanent link to this version.
Changes in this edit History

Pronunciation

Forms

tot (strong nominative masculine singular toter, comparative (rare) toter, superlative (rare) am totesten)[1] Older spellings are todt and tod.[1][2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German tōt, inherited from Old High German tōt, inherited from Proto-West Germanic *daud, inherited from Proto-Germanic *daudaz (“dead”).[3][1][4] The same word is Gothic 𐌳𐌰𐌿𐌸𐍃 (dauþs), Old Norse dauðr, Old English dēad, Old Frisian dād, Old Saxon dōd and Dutch dood, and English dead continues the Old English word.[3][5][4]

It was originally a past participle with the suffix Proto-Indo-European *-to-, of a Germanic verb meaning “to die”, so it meant “having died”.[3][5][4] That verb is found in Old High German touwen (“to die”), Middle High German töuwen, Old Saxon dōian and the strong Old Norse deyja, from which English took die, and it has since been lost in German.[5][6] Kroonen reconstructs the participle as Proto-Indo-European *dʰou(H)-tó-.[4]

Further back, Pfeifer compares Russian давить (davítʹ, “to press, strangle”), Old Irish duine (“human being”) (“a mortal”) and, less certainly, Latin fūnus (“funeral”), and sets up a root Proto-Indo-European *dʰew- (“to fade away, faint, die”).[5] Duden places the verb in the word group of Dunst.[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German tōt is one of the earliest recorded words, found in glosses (perhaps after 765), the Hildebrandslied, Isidor, the Monsee fragments, Tatian, Otfrid and Notker, meaning “dead”.[7][8] The phrase tōt werdan meant “to die”.[8]

Semantic evolution

The word soon took many transferred senses: “dead” of trees and limbs, “empty, without life” in das Tote Meer (the Dead Sea, recorded in 1350), and “without value or use”, as in Goethe's totes Gestein.[2] Adelung records todte Farbe (a dull colour) and todte Augen;[2] toter Winkel was first a term of fortification and now names the blind spot of a car mirror.[2] Goethe wrote of tote Sprachen, languages no longer spoken, and totes Kapital is money that earns no interest.[2]

In verb phrases tot became part of compounds such as totschlagen (Luther: Kain … schlug jn tod, Genesis 4:8), whence die Zeit totschlagen “to kill time” and the legal term Totschlag, manslaughter as opposed to murder.[2] In 19th-century children's language totgehen meant “to die”.[2] In recent youth slang tot describes something boring, embarrassing or bad.[1]

Timeline

  • 8th century – Old High German tōt is recorded.[3][7]
  • 1350 – First record of das Tote Meer.[2]
  • 1750 – First record of totes Kapital.[2]
  • 1784 – Jacobsson records toter Winkel, a term of fortification.[2]
  • 19th century – Children's language uses totgehen “to die”.[2]

Meanings

Adjective

  1. dead, no longer alive: Auf dem Feldweg lag ein toter Fuchs.[9][1]
  2. No longer existing as a living being, deceased: Der Vermisste wurde für tot erklärt.[9]
  3. No longer organically alive, withered; of a language, no longer spoken: ein toter Ast, eine tote Sprache.[9][2]
  4. Inorganic, lifeless: tote Materie.[9]
  5. (figurative) Not working, not connected: Die Telefonleitung ist tot.[9][1]
  6. (youth slang) Boring, bad, embarrassing.[1]

Word family

  • töten
  • Tote
  • totschlagen
  • Totschlag
  • totschweigen
  • mausetot
  • mundtot
  • scheintot
  • untot

Usage notes

Mehr tot als lebendig (“more dead than alive”) is to be completely exhausted, and tot und begraben (colloquial) is long forgotten.[9] The noun Tote “the dead person” is the adjective used as a noun, Old High German tōto.[6]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
  3. ^ a b c d Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 922
  4. ^ a b c d Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  5. ^ a b c d Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
  6. ^ a b c Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag, p. 864
  7. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
  8. ^ a b Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 333
  9. ^ a b c d e f Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag