warnen

Forms

warnen (third-person singular present warnt, past tense warnte, past participle gewarnt, auxiliary haben)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German warnen, inherited from Old High German warnōn, inherited from Proto-West Germanic *warnōn (“to take heed, warn”).^[2][3][1] The same verb is Old English wearnian, continued in English warn, and Middle Low German warnen, Middle Dutch warnen and Old Norse varna.^[2][3][4] Wiktionary reconstructs Proto-Germanic *warnōną, derived from a noun *warnō (“warning”).^[1][4]

Kluge, Pfeifer and Duden place it in the family of wahren: Kluge takes it most probably as a formation with a suffix in /n/ from that root, so that it first meant “to look out for oneself” and “to make someone look out”.^[2][3][5] Wiktionary takes the root as Proto-Indo-European *wer- (“to become aware, take heed”),^[1] while Köbler gives it the meaning “to shut, cover, protect”.^[6] The Grimms' dictionary adds that a verb from the family of wehren, Proto-Germanic *warnjan “to refuse, prevent”, was mixed with it; this verb is Old High German warnen in the Hildebrandslied, Old Saxon wernian and Old English wyrnan.^[7][6] The Germanic verb also gave Italian guarnire (“to equip”) and French garnir (see garnieren).^[7][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German warnōn is first recorded in glosses of 765, and then in Otfrid and Notker, meaning “to protect, prepare, equip” and, with a reflexive pronoun, “to take care, beware” or “to provide oneself with something”.^[6][8] The form warnen “to refuse” is found in the Hildebrandslied.^[8][6]

Semantic evolution

In Middle High German the reflexive verb meant to prepare or arm oneself and to provide oneself with something.^[9][10] In late Middle High German and Early New High German it could also mean “to prevent”, as in Fronsperger's pairing of warnen with wenden “to avert” harm.^[10] The modern sense, telling someone of a coming danger so that they can avoid it, is found from the Nibelungenlied on, but became common only in New High German.^[10] Adelung defined the verb in just this way.^[11]

From the 17th to the 19th century one could also warn wider or gegen something, as Herder did;^[10] vor is already found in Konrad von Würzburg and became the usual preposition.^[10] The noun Warnung goes back to Old High German warnunga (about 1000) and has had its present sense since the 16th century.^[3] verwarnen meant “to reprove, point to a danger” in the 16th century and “to threaten with a penalty” from the second half of the 18th.^[3]

Timeline

• 765 – Old High German warnōn appears in glosses.^[6]
• 8th century – The Hildebrandslied has warnen “to refuse”.^[6]
• About 1000 – First record of warnunga “preparation, protection”.^[3]
• Middle High German – The Nibelungenlied has the first instances of the modern sense.^[10]
• 1482 – The Vocabularius teutonico-latinus records warnen.^[10]
• 16th century – Warnung takes on its present sense.^[3]
• Second half of the 18th century – verwarnen comes to mean “to threaten with a penalty”.^[3]

Meanings

Verb

1. To warn someone of a danger, with vor and the dative: Der Wetterdienst warnt vor Sturmböen.; also without an object.^[12][1]
2. To advise someone urgently against something, often with a threat: Ich warne dich, fass das nicht an!;^[12] ein warnendes Beispiel, a deterrent example.^[12]

Word family

• verwarnen
• Warnung

Related words

• wahren
• wehren
• garnieren
• English warn

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 971
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 Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
5. ^ a b Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag
6. ^ a b c d e f Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
7. ^ a b Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 27, 2078
8. ^ a b Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 372
9. ^ Lexer, Matthias (1872–1878), Mittelhochdeutsches Handwörterbuch, 3 vols., Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 3, 693
10. ^ a b c d e f g Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
11. ^ Adelung, Johann Christoph (1793–1801), Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart, 2nd ed., 4 vols., Leipzig: Breitkopf
12. ^ a b c Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag