Etymologically
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zurück

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Pronunciation

  • /t͡suˈʁʏk/[1]

Forms

zurück[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle High German ze rucke, inherited from Old High German zi rugge (“to the back”), a phrase of the preposition zu and the noun now Rücken.[2][3][4] The same phrase is Middle Low German to rugge and Middle Dutch terugghe, whence Dutch terug and Low German torüch.[2][3][1] The noun goes back to Proto-Germanic *hrugjaz (“back”), also in Old Norse hryggr and Old English hrycg.[5][6] The Grimms compare the same development from a word for the back in Swedish tillbaka, Danish tilbage and English back.[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Old High German zi rugge “in the back, backwards, back”, rendering Latin retrorsum, is recorded from the 9th century.[8][3][2] Old High German also said hintar ruggi for “back”.[8]

Semantic evolution

In Middle High German the phrase still meant “onto the back”, while “back” was mostly expressed by hôher or hindersich.[7] The concrete meaning began to fade in the 12th century, and the phrase came to mean “backwards”;[2][9] Middle High German occasionally wrote it as one word, zerucke.[2][9] By the 17th century both the fusion into one word and the abstract meaning were complete.[7] The older zurücke then remained a poetic variant, used by Klopstock and Goethe.[7]

The adverb combines freely with verbs (zurückgehen, zurückrufen) and their nouns in -ung, while newer compound nouns use the short form Rück-, as in Rückblick and Rückfall.[2][3][4] Hungarian curukk “back”, recorded in 1600, is a borrowing of the German word.[10]

Timeline

  • 9th century – Old High German zi rugge is recorded.[3]
  • 12th century – The concrete meaning “to the back” begins to fade.[2]
  • 1600 – Hungarian curukk is recorded, borrowed from German.[10]
  • 17th century – zurück is fully established as one word with an abstract meaning.[7]

Meanings

Adverb

  1. back, to or towards the starting point: hin und zurück “there and back”.[9][1]
  2. Back, at the starting point again: Sie ist um sechs Uhr zurück.[9]
  3. backwards, to the rear; also as a command: Zurück! “stand back!”.[9][1]
  4. Further back, behind: Er saß zwei Reihen weiter zurück.[9]
  5. (regional) ago, before: ein Jahr zurück.[9]
  6. (colloquial) Behind in development, lagging: Die Kirschen sind dieses Jahr noch weit zurück.[9][11]

Word family

  • rück-

Usage notes

As a noun, das Zurück is the possibility of turning back, chiefly in es gibt kein Zurück “there is no going back”.[9][1] With verbs the word is a separable prefix: Er kommt morgen zurück.[11]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 1018
  3. ^ a b c d e 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 Duden. Das Herkunftswörterbuch: Etymologie der deutschen Sprache (2020), 6th ed., Duden vol. 7, Berlin: Dudenverlag, p. 703
  5. ^ Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 775
  6. ^ Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  7. ^ 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. 32, 678
  8. ^ a b Lloyd, Albert L.; Springer, Otto; Lühr, Rosemarie, et al. (1988–), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; online ewa.saw-leipzig.de, p. 7, 696
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h i Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag
  10. ^ a b Lehnwortportal Deutsch (2012–), Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache, Mannheim, lwp.ids-mannheim.de
  11. ^ a b Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer