Etymologically
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wir

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Pronunciation

  • /viːɐ̯/[1]
  • Colloquial: /vɐ/, /mɐ/[1]

Forms

wir (personal pronoun, first person plural; genitive unser, dative and accusative uns)[2] Middle High German also had the forms wër, wier and mir.[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German wir, inherited from Old High German wir, inherited from Proto-West Germanic *wiʀ, inherited from Proto-Germanic *wīz (“we”).[4][5][1] The same word is Gothic 𐍅𐌴𐌹𐍃 (weis), Old Norse vér, Old English wē, Old Saxon wī and Old Frisian wī, and it lives on in Dutch wij, English we and Swedish vi.[4][5][6]

Pfeifer reconstructs a long-vowelled form, kept in Gothic and Old Saxon, and a shortened *wiz behind the other forms.[5] The final /r/ of the High German form continues Germanic /z/, which Old Saxon, Old English and the other languages of the north and west lost.[5][7]

Outside Germanic, Pfeifer compares Hittite wēš, Tocharian B wes, Tocharian A was and Avestan vaēm “we”, and traces them to a stem Proto-Indo-European *u̯ei- with a plural ending.[5][8] Kluge accepts this source only for the long Gothic form; he doubts that the short form is merely a shortening of it, and compares it rather with Proto-Indo-European *mes, found in Baltic and Armenian, which would require an alternation of /m/ and /w/ at the start of the word.[4]

Beside the plural, the older Germanic languages had a dual, Gothic 𐍅𐌹𐍄 (wit), Old Saxon wit and Old English wit “we two”; in German it was replaced by the plural and is no longer recorded in Old High German.[5][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German wir is recorded from the 8th century.[4][5] It is used throughout the Old High German texts, among them the Isidor translation, the Benedictine Rule, the Freising Paternoster, Otfrid and Tatian, meaning “we”, and in relative phrases wir thār, wir thie “we who”.[9][10]

Semantic evolution

In Middle High German, Upper German had wir and Low German wē or wī; in Central German wir spread as the written form and often displaced the dialect form wi.[7] Southern dialects say mir for wir, a form recorded from the 15th century.[11]

Writers have used wir for themselves as a formula of modesty since 1548.[11] Adelung describes the princely Wir, by which rulers spoke of themselves in the plural, and explains it not as a mark of dignity but as a remnant of rulers' former dependence on their subjects.[12] Today the pronoun can also replace du, ihr or Sie in a familiar address, especially to children and patients.[2]

Timeline

  • 8th century – Old High German wir is first recorded.[4][5]
  • 15th century – The southern dialect form mir “we” appears.[11]
  • 1548 – First record of wir used by an author for himself as a formula of modesty.[11]

Meanings

Pronoun

  1. We: the speaker together with one or more other people.[2][1]
  2. (pluralis modestiae) Used by an author or speaker for himself or herself: “I”.[2]
  3. (pluralis majestatis) Used by a ruler of himself, written with a capital: Wir.[2]
  4. (familiar, dated) Used instead of du, ihr or Sie in addressing someone, especially children and patients.[2]

References

  1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
  3. ^ Lexer, Matthias (1872–1878), Mittelhochdeutsches Handwörterbuch, 3 vols., Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 3, 925
  4. ^ a b c d e Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 991
  5. ^ 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
  6. ^ Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  7. ^ a b c Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 30, 523
  8. ^ Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  9. ^ Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 393
  10. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
  11. ^ a b c d Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
  12. ^ Adelung, Johann Christoph (1793–1801), Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart, 2nd ed., 4 vols., Leipzig: Breitkopf, p. 4, 1570