Words from Middle High German
6 words in Curio passed through Middle High German on their way into English.
About Middle High German
Stage of High German, the German varieties affected by the Second Sound Shift · an earlier stage of a language still spoken today
Where
High German-speaking lands → eastward beyond the Elbe-Saale line
When
Speakers
No reliable count
No census of its speakers exists.
Family path
- Proto-Indo-European
- Proto-Germanic
- Germanic
- Old High German
- Middle High German
- Middle DutchGermanItalianOld EnglishRhine Franconian
- English
Dashed: reconstructed, never written down
Where it came from
Middle High German is the form of High German spoken in the High Middle Ages, conventionally dated 1050 to 1350. It grew out of Old High German and later became Early New High German. Speakers called it diutsch or tiutsch. In the late 12th century the prestige of the Hohenstaufen court gave rise to a literary language based on Swabian, an Alemannic dialect.
Source: Wikipedia
Family
Middle High German grew out of Old High German.
The words, A to Z
- boulevard
A wide, tree-lined street was once, quite literally, a fortress wall.
- fuchsia
This vivid pink-purple color is named after a man, not a mood or a flower itself.
- halberd
A medieval polearm whose name literally describes it as a handle with a beard.
- hollow
The empty space inside something once shared a root with the idea of concealment.
- larch
This tree's name traveled through at least four languages before it ever reached English soil.
- quiche
A savory egg pie that shares a family tree with cake, and, thanks to a sitcom, once meant something else entirely.