Etymologically
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uns

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Forms

uns (dative and accusative plural of the personal pronoun wir; also reflexive and reciprocal)[1] Old High German had dative uns and accusative unsih.[2] The accusative unsich was still frequent in the 12th century and the first half of the 13th, then disappeared from High German.[3][2] It survives in part in Low German dialects.[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German uns, inherited from Old High German uns, inherited from Proto-Germanic *uns.[5][6][4] The same word is Gothic 𐌿𐌽𐍃 (uns), beside 𐌿𐌽𐍃𐌹𐍃 (unsis, “us”), Old Norse oss, Old English ūs and Old Saxon ūs, and today Dutch ons, English us and Swedish oss;[5][2][7] Old Saxon, Old English and Old Norse lost the /n/ and lengthened the vowel.[5][2][7]

Pfeifer derives the Germanic form, together with Sanskrit अस्मान् (asmā́n, “us”), from Proto-Indo-European *n̥s, the zero grade of a plural of the pronominal stem *ne- seen in नः (naḥ, “us, our”); Latin nōs (“we, us”) has the lengthened grade.[2][7] Kluge finds an exact match outside Germanic in Hittite anzaš, and calls the formation of the Sanskrit, Greek and Latin pronouns different.[5]

The accusative endings of unsih, ūsic and Middle Low German ūsik were adapted to the accusative singular mich, and the Gothic dative and accusative took its ending from the dative singular 𐌼𐌹𐍃 (mis).[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Kluge dates the Old High German word to the 8th century.[5] Adelung, around 1800, cites uns from the Old High German glosses attributed to Kero and ons from Otfrid.[8]

Semantic evolution

Upper German dialects have an umlauted form üns, which the Grimms' dictionary explains by the influence of the old accusative unsich.[4] Older German could also use uns for the genitive unser, and in a part of Swabian the stressed nominative “we” is uns.[4] From the 14th century on, sich sometimes replaced uns as a reflexive (wir nähern sich); the Grimms' dictionary quotes Heynatz, who censured it as a Silesian habit.[4]

Timeline

  • 8th century – Old High German uns is recorded.[5]
  • 1060–1080 – Middle High German uns appears in the Vienna Genesis.[6]
  • 13th century – The accusative unsich disappears from High German.[2][4]

Meanings

Pronoun

  1. (dative and accusative of wir) us: Sie hat uns zum Essen eingeladen.[1]
  2. (reflexive) ourselves: Wir haben uns im Wald verlaufen.[1]
  3. (reciprocal) Each other, one another: Wir schreiben uns jede Woche.[1]

Word family

  • English us

References

  1. ^ a b c d Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
  3. ^ Lexer, Matthias (1872–1878), Mittelhochdeutsches Handwörterbuch, 3 vols., Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 2, 1929
  4. ^ a b c d e f Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 24, 1297
  5. ^ a b c d e f Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 943
  6. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
  7. ^ a b c Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag
  8. ^ Adelung, Johann Christoph (1793–1801), Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart, 2nd ed., 4 vols., Leipzig: Breitkopf