taugen

German

Etymology

From Middle High German tougen, tugen, tügen, from Old High German tugan (attested since the 9th century); from Proto-Germanic *duganą, from Proto-Indo-European *dʰewgʰ- (“to produce, to give milk”)[1]. Semantic evolution: "to produce, to give milk" > "to be useful, to be fitting, to avail".

Germanic Cognates include Yiddish טויגן‎ (toygn), Old Saxon dugan, Dutch deugen (> Afrikaans deug), Old English dugan (obsolete Modern English dow), Old Norse duga (> Icelandic duga, Faroese duga, Norwegian duge, Swedish duga, Danish du) and Gothic 𐌳𐌿𐌲𐌰𐌽 (dugan). Related to German Tugend and tüchtig.

Non-Germanic-Cognates include Ancient Greek τύχη (túkhē, “fate, chance, luck”), Irish dual (“proper, fitting”), Scottish Gaelic duan (“song, poem, harmonious sounds”), Sanskrit दोग्धि (dṓgdhi, “to milk, to extract”), Lithuanian daũg (“much”), Latvian daudz (“much, a lot”)[2].

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): [ˈtaʊ̯ɡn̩]
  • Audio(file)
  • Hyphenation: tau‧gen

Verb

taugen (weak, third-person singular present taugt, past tense taugte, past participle getaugt, auxiliary haben)

  1. to be fit
    Er taugt nicht für diese Arbeit.
    He's not up to the job.
    • 1882, Richard Wagner, Parsifal, Dritter Aufzug:
      Nur eine Waffe taugt: / die Wunde schliesst / der Speer nur, der sie schlug.
      But one weapon serves: / only the Spear that smote you / can heal your wound.

Conjugation

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Derived terms

References
  1. Ringe, Donald (2006) From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic (A Linguistic History of English; 1)‎, Oxford: Oxford University Press, →ISBN
  2. Wolfgang Pfeifer, editor (1993), “taugen”, in Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen (in German), 2nd edition, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, →ISBN

Further reading
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