vier

Forms

vier (cardinal number; usually uninflected, dative vieren when used without a noun)^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German vier, inherited from Old High German fior, inherited from Proto-West Germanic *feuwar, inherited from Proto-Germanic *fedwōr (“four”).^[4][1] The same numeral is Old Saxon fiuwar, Old English fēower, Old Frisian fiūwer, Old Norse fjórir and Gothic 𐍆𐌹𐌳𐍅𐍉𐍂 (fidwōr), and today Dutch vier, English four and Swedish fyra.^[4][5][6] It continues Proto-Indo-European *kʷetwṓr (“four”), also found in Sanskrit चत्वारः (catvā́raḥ), Ancient Greek τέσσαρες (téssares), Latin quattuor, Old Irish cethair, Lithuanian keturì, Old Church Slavonic четыре (četyre) and Tocharian B śtwer.^[4][6] Its further origin is unclear.^[4]

The Germanic word begins with /f/ instead of the expected /hw/: Kroonen and Wiktionary explain this by the influence of the next numeral, Proto-Germanic *fimf (“five”).^[5][1] Pfeifer instead sets up a form with /p/ for the labiovelar before the Germanic sound shift.^[6] The dental of Gothic is lost in West Germanic, where the forms point to Proto-West Germanic *fewar;^[5][4] Kroonen finds this hard to derive regularly from *fedwōr and suggests a dissimilation that started in the ordinal.^[5][4] It is kept in Old English fyðer- in compounds and in Frankish fitter- (“four”) of the Malberg glosses of the Salic law.^[4][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German fior is recorded from the 8th century in many texts and glosses, among them the Benedictine Rule, Tatian, Otfrid and Notker.^[7][8][9] It was inflected like an i-stem noun when it followed its noun or stood alone, but usually not before a noun.^[7]

Semantic evolution

Middle High German still inflected the numeral in part (viere, vieren), and Adelung around 1800 records an e added at the end of a clause, as in Luther's Ihrer viere trugen einen Gichtbrüchigen (Mark 2:3), but rejects it as bad usage.^[7][2] Josua Maaler explains alle viere in 1561 as hands and feet, and Grimmelshausen has a dying creature that streckt alle viere von sich;^[10] today alle viere von sich strecken is to stretch out and relax.^[3][10]

The feminine noun die Vier names the figure, a card, the face of a die and a school mark.^[11][3] Fixed fours appear in phrases such as in seinen vier Wänden “at home” and seine vier Buchstaben, a veiled word for the bottom.^[10]

Timeline

• 8th century – Old High German fior and fiorzug “forty” are recorded.^[7][6]
• 9th century – fiorzehan “fourteen” appears.^[6]
• 10th century – fiorteil “quarter”, the source of Viertel, is recorded.^[6]
• 16th century – Viereck “quadrilateral” appears as a noun.^[6][12]
• 1561 – Maaler records alle viere “hands and feet”.^[10]

Meanings

Numeral

1. Four, the number 4: vier Stühle.^[3][1]

Noun (die Vier)

1. The figure 4.^[3][1]
2. A playing card with four pips; four on a die.^[3]
3. The school mark 4, “adequate”.^[3][13]
4. (colloquial) A bus or tram of route number 4.^[3]

Word family

• vierte
• Viertel
• vierzehn
• vierzig
• Viereck
• viereckig
• Vierling
• vierschrötig
• Geviert

Related words

• Quader
• Quadrant
• acht
• English four

Usage notes

Auf allen vieren is “on all fours”, on hands and feet.^[3][10] After the Second World War die großen Vier were the four great powers.^[3]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Adelung, Johann Christoph (1793–1801), Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart, 2nd ed., 4 vols., Leipzig: Breitkopf
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
4. ^ a b c d e f g Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 960
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 g Pfeifer, Wolfgang, et al. (1993), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 2nd ed., Berlin: Akademie-Verlag; digital revised version in the DWDS, dwds.de
7. ^ a b c d e Lloyd, Albert L.; Springer, Otto; Lühr, Rosemarie, et al. (1988–), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; online ewa.saw-leipzig.de, p. 3, 264
8. ^ Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 103
9. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
10. ^ 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
11. ^ Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 26, 277
12. ^ Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag
13. ^ Wiktionary, das freie Wörterbuch (German Wiktionary), de.wiktionary.org