zweite

Forms

zweite (ordinal numeral; strong nominative masculine singular zweiter; no predicative form)^[1] In the 17th and especially the 18th century the forms zweete and zwote were also used, after the old masculine zween and feminine zwo of zwei.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is from German zwei + -te, a late formation on the model of the other ordinal numbers.^[2][3][1] It replaced ander, the older ordinal for “second”.^[4][5][3] The sources differ on the date: the Grimms' dictionary and Pfeifer find it first in the 14th century, Paul at the end of the 14th century, Kluge in the 15th.^[2][5][3][4]

The base zwei continues Old High German zwei, the neuter of the Old High German numeral, which goes back to Proto-Indo-European *duu̯ō (“two”), as do English two, Latin duo and Ancient Greek δύο (dúo).^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The Grimms' dictionary finds zweite first in the 14th century, in place of ander; until the 17th century it is only thinly recorded, because ander lived on beside it.^[2] A 15th-century glossary renders Latin secundus with zweide.^[2]

Semantic evolution

Besides simple counting, zweite also came to mean “another, a further one”, where the idea of order recedes.^[2] Ander in the sense “second” still survives in dialects such as Swabian.^[2] The adverb zweitens is recorded from the 17th century.^[5]

Paul dates zur zweiten Natur werden “to become second nature” to the early 19th century, after Cicero's saying that habit is a kind of second nature, and das zweite Gesicht “second sight” to 1844 (Ernst Moritz Arndt), after English second sight.^[3] Zu zweit “in twos, as a pair” hardly appears before the 19th century, beside older zu zweien, and new compounds in Zweit- such as Zweitwagen and Zweitwohnung are recent.^[3]

Timeline

• 14th century – zweite is first recorded, replacing ander.^[2][5]
• 15th century – A glossary gives zweide for Latin secundus.^[2]
• 17th century – The adverb zweitens appears;^[5] the forms zweete and zwote come into use.^[2]
• 18th century – Goethe writes zweeten and Schiller zwoten.^[2][3]
• 1844 – Das zweite Gesicht “second sight” is used by Ernst Moritz Arndt.^[3]

Meanings

Numeral

1. second: coming after the first in order: ihr zweites Buch, der Zweite Weltkrieg.^[6][1]
2. Another, a further one like the first: ein zweiter Goethe (an outstanding poet).^[6][2]
3. (as a noun, der/die Zweite) The runner-up, the person in second place.^[6][1]

Word family

• zweitens
• Zweitwagen
• Zweitwohnung

Related words

• zwei
• ander

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Grimm, Jacob; Grimm, Wilhelm (1854–1961), Deutsches Wörterbuch, 16 vols. in 32, Leipzig: Hirzel; digital: Wörterbuchnetz, Trier Center for Digital Humanities, p. 32, 1074
3. ^ a b c d e f g h Paul, Hermann (2002), Deutsches Wörterbuch: Bedeutungsgeschichte und Aufbau unseres Wortschatzes, 10th ed., ed. Helmut Henne, Heidrun Kämper and Georg Objartel, Tübingen: Niemeyer
4. ^ a b Kluge, Friedrich; Seebold, Elmar (2011), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 25th ed., Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, p. 1019
5. ^ a b c d e f 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 c Duden. Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache in zehn Bänden (1999), 3rd ed., Mannheim: Dudenverlag