zählen

Forms

zählen (third-person singular present zählt, past tense zählte, past participle gezählt, auxiliary haben)^[1] Middle High German formed the past mostly without umlaut, zalte, gezalt, forms that lasted into the 16th century, as in the 1483 Bible die har eures haubtes sind all gezalt.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German zellen (also zeln), inherited from Old High German zellen, inherited from Proto-West Germanic *talljan, inherited from Proto-Germanic *taljaną (“to count, tell”), a verb formed on the noun Zahl, Old High German zala.^[3][4][1] The same verb is Old Saxon tellian, Old English tellan, Old Frisian tella and Old Norse telja, continued in Dutch tellen, English tell and Swedish tälja.^[3][4]

The /ll/ of Old High German is the West Germanic doubling; the long vowel of the modern verb comes from the second and third persons singular of the present, which had no doubling, helped by the long vowel of the noun.^[1] Köbler compares, with a question mark, a root Proto-Indo-European *del- (“to aim, reckon”), and Wiktionary Latin dolus (“guile”).^[5][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German zellen is found from the last quarter of the 8th century in the glosses, then in Isidor, Tatian, Otfrid and Notker.^[5][6] It meant “to count, enumerate”, and just as often “to tell, report, proclaim, confess, consider, say”: Otfrid's thir zell ih hiar ubarlût is “I tell you here openly”.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The verb first meant “to give an account”, from which came both enumerating and simply telling.^[2] In New High German, as with Zahl, it was narrowed to counting, and the sense of telling passed to erzählen.^[4][7] Adelung called the sense “to speak” long obsolete.^[8] English “tell”, by contrast, kept chiefly the sense of speaking.^[4]

Jemanden unter seine Freunde zählen “to count someone among one's friends” is recorded by Adelung.^[8] The agent noun Zähler became the numerator of a fraction as a loan translation of Medieval Latin numerator: Duden dates this to about 1400, Pfeifer to the early 16th century;^[7][4] since the 19th century it has also meant a meter.^[4][7]

Timeline

• Last quarter of the 8th century – Old High German zellen appears in the glosses.^[5][3]
• 9th century – Otfrid uses zellen for “to tell”.^[2]
• About 1400 – Zähler “numerator” is formed after Latin, by Duden's date.^[7]
• 1483 – A Bible still has the unumlauted participle gezalt.^[2]
• 17th century – Zählung “counting” is recorded.^[4]
• 19th century – Zähler names a meter.^[4]

Meanings

Verb

1. To count, recite numbers in order: die Kleine kann schon bis zwanzig zählen.^[9][1]
2. To count, find the number or sum of: das Wechselgeld zählen.^[9][1]
3. (formal) To have, number: das Dorf zählt 800 Einwohner.^[9][1]
4. To reckon among, regard as belonging to: ich zähle sie zu meinen Freundinnen; also intransitive, to belong to: Wale zählen zu den Säugetieren.^[9][1]
5. To be of importance, to count, matter.^[9][1]
6. With auf: to count on, rely on.^[9][1]
7. (archaic) To tell, recount.^[1]

Word family

• erzählen
• Zähler
• Zählung
• abzählen
• aufzählen
• nachzählen
• verzählen
• zählbar
• zusammenzählen

Related words

• zahlen
• Zahl
• English tell

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 31, 47
3. ^ a b c Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 1001
4. ^ 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
5. ^ a b c Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 6th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
6. ^ Schützeichel, Rudolf (2012), Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, 7th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 405
7. ^ a b c d Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag, p. 943
8. ^ a b Adelung, Johann Christoph (1793–1801), Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart, 2nd ed., 4 vols., Leipzig: Breitkopf, p. 4, 1645
9. ^ a b c d e f Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag