# German-English cognates



## terredepomme

As many know, German and English share a lot of cognate words, but many of them are not immediately recognizable.
But as I've did some research on etymological relationships of German and English words, I found it very interesting and helpful in memorizing German words.
So I thought it would be beneficial to have a thread where we list German-English cognates that are not so obvious.
To start off:

Baum(tree) - beam
laufen(run) - leap, lope
treuen(believe) - true, truce
ziehen(pull) - tow
führen(lead) - fare
forschen(search) - postulate
scheiden(dissolve, divorce) - shed
wenden(turn) - went(pretarite of "go," originally a different word "wend")
krank(sick) - cringe, crank
zehren(live off something) - tear
gelten(be valid, be regarded as) - yield
Rat(advice) - read
Leid(grief) - loath
sterben(die) - starve
gedulden(be patient) - thole, tolerate
zeigen(point) - teach
Zeit(time) - tide

Source: Etymonline, Wiktionary, Google Books

Here are some words that I failed in finding English cognates:
Not, trüb, gnädig, geschehen, schicken
If you can find any(if there are any), I would appreciate to know them.
Also, if there's anything wrong or unverified about the cognate list that I have posted, please let me know.
And any suggestions of paper or online resources about this are welcome.


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## Scholiast

_Not_: "need"
_trüb_: perhaps "drab"

You cannot have "postulate" from _forschen_ or "tolerate" from _gedulden_: these are Latin stems.

You might like to add "bumpkin" (= _Bäumchen_), and "tug" from _ziehen_. I suspect that "fare" is from _fahr_- rather than _führ_-. And add "rede" to _Rat_.

Some others for your collection - there must be comprehensive reference works, but these just occur at once:

_Arg_/_ärgern_: "irk(some)"
_Dach_: "thatch"
_Dorf_: "-thorpe" (suffix in numerous English place-names)
_gegen_: "against" (dialect "agin")
_Lenz_: "Lent"
_lüegen_ (Alemannic): "look"
_sehr_: "sore" (Biblical English, "they were sore afraid")
_sehren_: "sear"
_Schluck_: "slug" (AmE slang for a drink)
_schweben_: "sweep"
_sonder_: "(a)sunder"
_streben_: "strive"


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## CapnPrep

Scholiast said:


> You cannot have "postulate" from _forschen_ or "tolerate" from _gedulden_: these are Latin stems.


You can, and you do. There are early Latin loanwords in German, and — more relevant in these two cases — Latin and German of course have a common ancestor. So they have many many (many) cognates that may not be recognizable to the casual observer. Far too many to mention in one thread. And such cognates are generally of very limited usefulness when it comes to memorizing vocabulary.


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## Scholiast

> You can, and you do. There are early Latin loanwords in German, and —  more relevant in these two cases — Latin and German of course have a  common ancestor



Of course CapnPrep is quite right (as usual) on both counts. And I am perfectly willing to believe that in Sanskrit or PIE a kinship may be traced between _dulden_ and _tolerare_, especially in light of _tollo_, _tuli_, [_t_]_latus_; for that matter, whether loaned or otherwise, between _Dach_/thatch and Lat. _tego_, _tegere_, _tectum_. I fear I may have misread the purport of the original question, and supposed - justifiably or otherwise - that terredepomme was thinking of cognate words of closer and more recent extraction.


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## Hulalessar

In the context of "German-English cognates" does "cognate" not imply "immediate common ancestor? Across the Germanic languages _sister_ and _schwester_ are cognates, but is it correct to say they are _German-English _cognates since _sister _derives from Old Norse _systir _(North Germanic)_,_ English having abandoned the Old English _sweostor_ (West Germanic)?


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## Frank78

Scholiast said:


> _gegen_: "against" (dialect "agin")
> _lüegen_ (Alemannic): "look"



Isn't "against" of Scandinavian origin?
"Look" as also another cognate which is "lugen".

There are over 100 words which are immediatly recognizable for English and German speakers but thats not what you are looking for, right?

The easiest thing is to look at the German sound shift then you can deduce almost any word of Germanic origin in English.

throng - (An-)drang
throstle - Drossel
fathom - Faden
dale - Tal
deal - Teil
deer - (Jagd)tier
speed - sputen (to hurry up)
dull - toll (obsolete in modern German, changed the meaning)
twig - Zweig
tit - Zitze
till - Ziel (goal,destination)
cheap - Kauf
tip - Zipfel
sick - siech
smoke - schmauchen
strike- Streich
cough - keuchen
town - Zaun

etc.


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## berndf

Sometimes it helps to pronounce English words like they are spelled which by and large correspond to their pronunciations in Late Middle English; then some more cognates become surprisingly obvious for words which sound quite different in Modern English. E.g.:
_Light_ /lɪçt/ - _Licht_ /lɪçt/
_Knight_ /knɪçt/ - _Knecht_ /knɛçt/


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## ancalimon

berndf said:


> Sometimes it helps to pronounce English words like they are spelled which by and large correspond to their pronunciations in Late Middle English; then some more cognates become surprisingly obvious for words which sound quite different in Modern English. E.g.:
> _Light_ /lɪçt/ - _Licht_ /lɪçt/
> _Knight_ /knɪçt/ - _Knecht_ /knɛçt/



I don't know about other people but to me (as a native Turkish speaker) these words seem obvious.


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## Scholiast

Thanks, Frank78, you may well be right about "against" being more immediately of Norse than of A-S origin. There are however quite a few common Germanic stems which have come into English separately and in two distinct forms, via A-S and Viking Norse - ship/skiff and shirt/skirt come to mind. "against"/"agin" could be another example.

Incidentally, Tier correlates with "deer" (not "dear").

And Hulalessar: you are of course right, so Latin _signum,_ Germ. _Zeichen_ and Engl. "sign" and "token" are in this sense all cognate. But it is hardly conestable that the relationship between _signum_ and "sign" on one hand, and between _Zeichen_ and "token" on the other, is closer than that between each pair.


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## berndf

Frank78 said:


> Isn't "against" of Scandinavian origin?


I don't think so. It is cognate with German _entgegen _(compare to Old Saxon _angegin_ and Old English _ongean_).

The plosive "g" is probably due to Old Norse influence. If it were of pure Anglo-Saxon origin you would gave expected _ayainst_ instead of _against_ (See here).


Frank78 said:


> "Look" as also another cognate which is "luken".


_Lu*g*en_, nicht_ lu*k*en_.


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## terredepomme

Not being a linguist, I haven't employed the term "cognate" in the most precise manner. Please note that I just meant two words who are etymologically related in any way, should they be of common Germanic roots or of a more distant one.


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## terredepomme

> dull - toll


It's interesting to see how the original sense of "foolish" developed in the exactly opposite way: "boring" in English and "cool" in German.


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## berndf

ancalimon said:


> I don't know about other people but to me (as a native Turkish speaker) these words seem obvious.


Based on modern pronunciation alone it shouldn't be. If you your associations were so "free" that you would connect those words, even if you didn't know their spelling and the historical pronunciation these spellings represent, you'd be bound to make many, many mistakes. Take e.g. _Knecht_ and _Nacht_. Those are very different words, in terms of pronunciation, in terms of etymology and in terms of meaning; yet their English cognates _knight_ and _night_ are pronounced exactly the same.


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## terredepomme

satt(enough, well-fed, fed up with) - sad
According to the dictionary of WR:


> *word history*: The _Old English_ word _sæd_ meant ‘having had one's fill; sated and weary’. Ultimately it is from an _Indo-European_ word, the source also of _Latin_ _satis_ ‘enough’, which itself is the source of *satisfy*. In the 14th century *sad* developed the senses ‘steadfast, firm’ and ‘serious, sober’. By the late 15th century it had acquired its modern meaning, ‘sorrowful’. The newest sense, ‘pathetically inadequate or unfashionable’ gained currency in the late 1980s.


The german word for sad "traurig" cognates with "dreary."


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## terredepomme

weichen(to yield, move) - weak
Blatt(leaf) - blade
weh(sore) - woe


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## terredepomme

I'm searching for the cognates of "Lohn(wage, reward)" and "locken(lure)" but can't find any. Could these be related to "loan" and "luck" respectively?


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## terredepomme

And also, when I sought for the cognate of "Zorn"(anger), I got "torn." Since the cognate of the present tense "tear" is "zehren," could we say that "Zorn" was originally a past tense of "zehren?"


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## ancalimon

berndf said:


> Based on modern pronunciation alone it shouldn't be. If you your associations were so "free" that you would connect those words, even if you didn't know their spelling and the historical pronunciation these spellings represent, you'd be bound to make many, many mistakes. Take e.g. _Knecht_ and _Nacht_. Those are very different words, in terms of pronunciation, in terms of etymology and in terms of meaning; yet their English cognates _knight_ and _night_ are pronounced exactly the same.



Actually all I do to see that they are almost the same words is to spell the letters like they are Turkish words. Although I agree with the rest of your reply. It's not enough.
What I meant was that, to a Turkish speaker _Light_-_Licht_ & _Knight_-_Knecht_ looks like they almost the same words only if they are pronounced like they were Turkish words. I just find it weird that these kind of relations are not evident at first sight to native speakers of German,English. There was also topic about moon&month being cognates and many people were surprised to hear that.


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## berndf

terredepomme said:


> ...could we say that "Zorn" was originally a past tense of "zehren?"


No, the similarity is accidental.


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## berndf

ancalimon said:


> I just find it weird that these kind of relations are not evident at first sight to native speakers of German,English.


Because perception of similarity is based on pronunciation and not on spelling. In addition, not all people know that English "gh" and German "ch" once represented the same phoneme.





ancalimon said:


> There was also topic about moon&month being cognates and many people were surprised to hear that.


This surprised me too.


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## terredepomme

> No, the similarity is accidental.


I guess I misinterpreted "Zorn" being cognate with "torn," the latter being an OE word for "anger," instead of being the past tense of "tear."


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## terredepomme

What is a good published material for this subject? Kluge seems good but it doesn't necessarily give the English cognates.


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## terredepomme

This is particularly interesting:
Schnecke(snail) - snail, snake, which both suggests to "to sneak."
"Snail" follows the disappearance of gutteral sound before L, like in Nagel - nail, Siegel - seal, etc.
And Schlange(snake) is perhaps related to "schleichen(sneak)."
source: here and here

I can easily imagine ancient Germanic tribes seeing these creatures sneaking into their houses and saying "them sneaking ones," so personally this is for me convincing.


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## berndf

terredepomme said:


> What is a good published material for this subject? Kluge seems good but it doesn't necessarily give the English cognates.


Grimm provides English, the OED German cognates.


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## terredepomme

glauben(believe), loben(praise) - be*lieve*
This source gives a very interesting explanation how different cognates of loben have so diverse meanings such as believe, praise, permit, give leave, or promise, and yet derive from the same radical notion of "approving (the quality of)."
It's a fairly dated source(from late 19th), so it might have some wrong points, but a very interesting read nevertheless.


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## terredepomme

genießen(enjoy, to benefit from) - neat(a black cattle, an ox)
These animals were named as such because they were useful, hence easy to benefit from.
Source


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## terredepomme

> I'm searching for the cognates of "Lohn(wage, reward)" and "locken(lure)" but can't find any. Could these be related to "loan" and "luck" respectively?


Well I found the answers on my own. Lohn is (distantly) related to "lucre," whereas "lend," the verb from of "loan" is related to "lean" which is in turn cognate with "lehnen(lean)."
Locken is indeed cognate with luck: in the sense of luring, tempting (with reward).


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## terredepomme

Another interesting one(it seems I'm the only one contributing to this thread...)

drehen(turn, twist) : draht(wire) - throw : thread

Since it is obvious that a thread is fabricated through twisting(turning), we can see here that the original meaning of twisting has been more or less conserved in all these words except for "throw." However, "throw" still retains this sense of "twisting" when we say "throwing silk," or a "pottery thrower" who twists clay to make pottery.
 cf. Latin "torquere" (twist)

And another intriguing remark... a cognate of "werfen(to throw)" is "to warp," which means... to distort or twist in shape! The original sense of "warp" included the sense of "throw." So you have here two words, throw and warp, which followed more or less opposite directions of semantic change.


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## CapnPrep

terredepomme said:


> it seems I'm the only one contributing to this thread...


Perhaps because this thread has no focus… There are *tens of thousands* of German-English cognates ("etymologically related in any way"). Many of them (still *tens of thousands*) can be considered "not so obvious" or "very interesting". Do you want to list them all here? berndf has already given you the references for the main etymological dictionaries of the two languages. Almost every entry for every word contains some surprising information. Should we just start at "A" and copy everything into this thread?


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## terredepomme

> Should we just start at "A" and copy everything into this thread?


Well I'm suggesting that we only post interesting ones. I'm posting only the interesting fraction of what I'm finding, so I thought that could be enough of a focus.
Maybe the thread title should be changed to "interesting German-English cognates?"


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## miguel89

I've always found interesting English tell vs. German zählen, due to the parallel semantic development in Romance languages.

You can find lots of cognates by searching for 





> site:etymonline.com "Ger."


 with Google.


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## terredepomme

I can't find an English cognate of the word Neid(envy). Any suggestions?


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## Frank78

terredepomme said:


> I can't find an English cognate of the word Neid(envy). Any suggestions?



There was " nîth/nîð" in OE, the word was of gothic origin: "neiþ" but Grimm says the etymology is uncertain.

I guess the word died out then?!


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