weiter

Forms

weiter^[1]

Etymology

It is the comparative adverb of weit: inherited from Middle High German wīter, inherited from Old High German wītōr.^[2][3][1] The adjective is wīt, Proto-Germanic *wīdaz (“wide”), the same word as Old English wīd and Old Norse víðr and today English wide and Dutch wijd.^[4][5][1] Kluge calls its further origin unclear;^[4][5][6] Pfeifer and Duden explain it as Proto-Indo-European *u̯i-itós (“gone apart”), from a particle meaning “apart” and the root of “go”.^[4][5][6]

Semantic evolution

As an adverb the comparative came to mean “on, beyond the point already reached”, and so the continuation of an action; in this sense it replaced ferner for movement in space, while ferner kept the sense “from now on”.^[7] From this came the many compounds with weiter- (weitergehen, weiterentwickeln), some already in the 16th century, such as Weiterfahrt.^[3][7] With negations and in questions it means “else, besides” (nichts weiter), and southern German has weiters “furthermore”.^[7] The phrase und so weiter entered English in 1885.^[8]

Meanings

Adverb

1. On, further: expressing that a movement or action continues.^[2][1]
2. Subsequently, from then on, afterwards.^[2]
3. Besides, else, otherwise.^[2]
4. (colloquial, with a negation) Particularly, really.^[2]
5. The comparative of weit: farther.^[1]

Interjection

1. Go on! Next!^[1]

Word family

• weiterhin
• weitergehen
• Weiterfahrt
• erweitern

Related words

• weiter-
• weit
• Weite
• ferner

Usage notes

Und so weiter (abbreviated usw.) ends a list whose further members are left out.^[2] The adjective weitere means “additional, further”, and the set phrases bis auf weiteres (for the time being) and ohne weiteres (readily, without difficulty) belong to it.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
3. ^ a b Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 28, 1279
4. ^ a b c Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 980
5. ^ a b c 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 Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag, p. 927
7. ^ a b c Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
8. ^ Lehnwortportal Deutsch (2012–), Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim, lwp.ids-mannheim.de