{"id":6858,"date":"2025-05-07T15:42:44","date_gmt":"2025-05-07T15:42:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=6858"},"modified":"2025-05-07T15:48:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T15:48:10","slug":"word-of-the-day-gemutlich","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2025\/05\/07\/word-of-the-day-gemutlich\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Day: Gem\u00fctlich"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today\u2019s word of the day, thanks to www.dictionary.com<\/a>, is gem\u00fctlich<\/em>. Gem\u00fctlich<\/em> is an adjective that means \u201ccomfortable and pleasant\u201d (https:\/\/www.dictionary.com\/e\/word-of-the-day\/<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gem\u00fctlich<\/em> is a loanword, which perhaps obviously means that English borrowed the word from another language, in this case Deutsch[i]<\/a>. We borrow words in basically two different ways. One way is the way of the loanword: we don\u2019t have a word for something, so we just start using the foreign word as if it were an English word. Some examples would be taco<\/em> from Spanish, karate<\/em> from Japanese, or moose<\/em> from an Algonquian language. Sometimes, especially with older words, we have modified the spelling and\/or the pronunciation of the word for one reason or another, but with other words we have adopted the word wholesale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keep in mind that using a loanword is not the same as using a foreign word or phrase in your writing or your speech; these words are no longer considered foreign words. Here\u2019s how you can tell the difference. When you are writing in a formal setting, particularly in an academic setting, you are supposed to italicize (or underline) foreign words or phrases: \u201cAlthough the phrase carpe diem<\/em> has been around for centuries, it was popularized by the 1989 film Dead Poets Society<\/em>.\u201d Carpe diem<\/em> is Latin for \u201cSeize the day,\u201d and while we hear it in all kinds of settings, nobody would suggest that it is an English phrase now. The words I mentioned in the previous paragraph are never italicized as foreign words because they have been adopted and Anglicized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other way in which we borrow from other languages is called calquing<\/em>. Calquing<\/em> is the process of forming a new word through translating a foreign word or phrase, and the result of the process is called a calque<\/em>. This word comes into the language in \u201c1937, from French calque<\/em>, literally \u2018a copy,\u2019 from calquer<\/em> \u2018to trace by rubbing\u2019 (itself borrowed in English 1660s as calk<\/em> \u2018to copy by tracing\u2019), a 16c. borrowing by French of Italian calcare<\/em>, from Latin calcare<\/em> \u2018to tread, to press down\u2019\u201d (https:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/search?q=calque<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A couple of examples of calques from Deutsch are superman<\/em> (from \u00dcbermensch<\/em>) and worldview <\/em>(from Weltanschauung<\/em>). Milky Way<\/em> calques the Latin via lactea<\/em>, and Devil’s advocate<\/em> calques the Latin advoc\u0101tus diabol\u012b<\/em>, \u201creferring to an official appointed to present arguments against a proposed canonization or beatification in the Catholic Church\u201d (https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_calques<\/a>). Moment of truth<\/em> calques the Spanish el momento de la verdad<\/em>, the final sword thrust in a bullfight (ibid.), and Blue-blood<\/em> calques the Spanish sangre azul<\/em>. And somewhat ironically, the word loanword <\/em>is a calque of the Deutsch Lehnwort<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My father was a Lutheran pastor who grew up in a Deutsch area of Philadelphia. His grandfather came over from Deutschland, and he did speak some Deutsch. In fact, a couple of blocks from my father\u2019s church, Salem Lutheran Church, there was a Hungarian\/German Lutheran church (this was in Bethlehem, PA, where I grew up). When the pastor of the Hungarian\/German church needed a Sunday off, my father would supply for the Deutsch service, conducting the service and preaching the sermon in Deutsch. He would occasionally use Deutsch with us: for instance, when we kids wanted something unnecessary and espensive, instead of saying something about a money tree in the backyard, he would say that he needed a Geldschei\u00dfer <\/em>(I\u2019ll let you look that one up).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also occasionally used the Deutsch term Gem\u00fctlichkeit<\/em>, which on Google translate comes up as coziness,<\/em> but my dad said that there was not a really good, accurate translation of the word. We also grew up saying \u201cGesundheit\u201d when someone sneezed. Gesundheit is a Deutsch word that roughly translates as health. According to www.etymonline<\/a>, it entered the language in \u201c1914, from German Gesundheit<\/em>, literally \u2018health!\u2019, from Old High German gisunt<\/em>, gisunti<\/em> \u2018healthy\u2019\u201d (https:\/\/www.etymonline.com\/search?q=Gesundheit<\/a>). According to Merriam-Webster, \u201cit was formed by a combination of gesund<\/em> (\u2018healthy\u2019) and -heit<\/em> (\u2018-hood\u2019)\u201d (https:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/dictionary\/gesundheit<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, the line between a word that has been Anglicized and a word that is still a foreign word may be a bit fuzzy. I had a professor, Dr. Gordon,  in grad school who told this story. He was traveling in Deutschland with his wife. They were in a small, out-of-the-way town where they had stopped in at a small caf\u00e9 for lunch. He noticed a group of American women sitting at the table nearby, and they were struggling because the server didn\u2019t speak English and the women didn\u2019t speak German (this was many years ago). In another part of the caf\u00e9, someone sneezed, and someone else said, \u201cGesundheit.\u201d And one of the women at the American table said, \u201cFinally, someone who speaks English.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today\u2019s image is from somebody\u2019s marketing page, where they are trying to sell a DIY sign. I just like it. https:\/\/www.therozyhomebykelly.com\/product-page\/diy-kit-gemutlichkeit-sign<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

[i]<\/a> There has been an emphasis in American English (and perhaps other Englishes) in the last few decades on calling people what they would prefer to be called or on what they call themselves, so I choose to use Deutsch<\/em>; \u201cDeutschland is an endonym, or an \u2018inside name\u2019 \u2014 in other words, it\u2019s the name Germans use to refer to their own country since around the eighth century<\/a>\u201d (https:\/\/www.babbel.com\/en\/magazine\/why-is-germany-called-deutschland<\/a>). The website adds, \u201cThe etymology of Deutschland is pretty simple. The word deutsch<\/em> comes from diutisc<\/em> in Old High German, which means \u2018of the people.\u2019 Land<\/em> literally just means \u2018land.\u2019 In other words, Deutschland basically means something to the effect of \u2018the people\u2019s land.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s word of the day, thanks to www.dictionary.com, is gem\u00fctlich. Gem\u00fctlich is an adjective that means \u201ccomfortable and pleasant\u201d (https:\/\/www.dictionary.com\/e\/word-of-the-day\/). Gem\u00fctlich is a loanword, which perhaps obviously means that English […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6859,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[736,395,284],"class_list":["post-6858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-word-of-the-day","tag-deutsch","tag-etymology","tag-linguistics","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6858"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6860,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6858\/revisions\/6860"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}