Hello everyone,
and welcome to our German Word of the Day, this time with a quick look at the meaning of
die Eile
Eile is the German word for a hurry.
If I asked you if those two words are related you’d probably say no, because they don’t look similar at all.
Eile does have English relatives however, and those look even less similar.
The Crazy Origin of “Eile”
Here’s a little selection:
- ambition
- itinerary
- preterite
- ion and
- coitus
There are quite a few more that all come from Latin and look boring. Well, except coitus. That one is not boring, I’ve heard, which is why it’s on my bucket list… I… I mean, was. It was on my bucket list.
Seriously though, I know it seems unlikely, but all these words I just listed are indeed related to die Eile.
Their common origin is the savagely ancient Indo-European root *ei- and the meaning of that root was simply… to go. Same root as where the Slavic verbs for to go come from, like the Russian идти (idti), for example.
If you’re into etymology, it could be kind of fun to look up all the various words that came from it and explore the connection between the idea of going and their actual meaning. I’ll leave a link to Etymonline.com below, if you want to geek out a little.
But for the German die Eile, we actually don’t need any mind yoga, for once. Die Eile is the noun for the verb eilen, and eilen more or less means … to go fast. So basically what you do when you’re in a hurry.
Tadah.
Now, eilen is still around actually, but it’s a little outdated and you can mostly find it in fixed phrases.
- Der Einhornjäger eilt dem Wanderer zur Hilfe.
- The unicorn hunter rushes to the hiker’s aid.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
- “Kommst du?”
“Ich eile.” - “Are you coming?”
“I’m flying.”(slightly dramatic sounding, for fun effect) - Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
The noun die Eile on the other hand is really really common, especially in a world like ours that seems to get faster every day. #boomertears
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Ich hab diesen Artikel vor ein paar Tagen in Eile/ eilig gelesen, da ist bei mir nix davon hängengeblieben. Deshalb habe ich ihn diesmal von Anfang bis Ende gründlich durchgelesen. Wie man so schön sagt: Eile mit Weile.
Sehr gut, wieder mal perfekt geschrieben!!
Hello!
I’m a young med student and I love learning new languages. For my future career steps, I have started to learn German by myself. Let me tell you, this language is not easy to understand and learn and let alone being self taught. There are A LOT OF sources on internet but not all of them are truly helpful.
But thanks to this site I can find myself understanding the fundamentals of German. My financial condition is not so great, and they are so generous to offer me a scholarship. I would like to say thank you to funders who helped me getting a scholarship and Emanuel for making learning German fun and accessible!
Ich habe gestern das Wort ereilen gehört im Zusammenhang mit einer Krankheit..aber bin mir nicht sicher, ob ich es richtig verstanden habe..kann das sein? Wie verwendet man ereilen?
Kurze Antwort: gar nicht ;)!
Die ursprüngliche Idee ist “hurry and reach”. Wenn dich eine Krankheit “ereilt”, dann kommt sie “schnell” über dich.
Aber das Wort funktioniert im Prinzip nur in festen Kontexten, wie Krankheit. Also… nicht frei im Alltag benutzen. Das wird nciht funktionieren :)
Ahh ok, dann werde ich bei der Arbeit nicht sagen: viele Aufgaben haben mich ereilt:D
Danke!
Kannst du machen, aber nur als Spaß, mit extra Drama in der Stimme und so.
Wait, so, even in the vocab list after the test “eilen” is “to rush”, which means the same as “to hurry”, but I got question 4 wrong when I answered that “eilen” is the German word for “to hurry”! The test says that “beeilen” is the correct answer but that should be “sich beeilen” (shouldn’t it?) and means “to hurry oneself” which admittedly does just mean “to hurry” in English. Errrmmmm…I’m going to the bottom of the class, aren’t I? Can I interest you in an apple?
The class is bottomless and you’ll go straight to Wonderland :).
Seriously, the vocabulary list says “rush” as translation for “eilen” and in the post I mention that it’s rarely used and only in a few fixed phrasings.
These things matter for the quizzes, even if they’re easy to miss sometimes.
That said, I did skip the “sich” so as to not make it too easy but I can totally accept that that might make you think like “No, he explicity said “sich” so that’s not it.”
I’ll add the “sich” now and you can count the question as answered correctly :D
Sorry, just saw that you did mention “to rush”. The stuff in parentheses in the vocab section.
thank yo so much
In case you weren’t totally goofing around, there is no word “unrelateder” (let alone “unrelatederer”, haha); one would just say “even more unrelated”, or better yet “even less related”.
In this case I was goofing around :).
Paypal once had an add camplain in Germany where they said “it’s safererererererererer” (a full 6 meter long across a flight of stairs). I kind of like this mock-forms in English, so I use them from time to time.
Did you know it’s a reference to Alice in Wonderland? “Curiouser and curiouser” I like adding “er” to the end of words – “betterer and betterer” is a fave!
Oh really?! No I didn’t know that!! That’s awesome and makes it way legiter than Paypal or Youtube (not grammatically, but as a literary trope)
Kann man auch ‘sich ranhalten’ fuer ‘to be in hurry / hurry up’ verwenden?
“sich ranhalten” ist eine Alternative for “sich beeilen”. Also “to hurry up”.
Aber fast immer in combination mit “müssen”. Ich höre es selten ohne
– Ich halte mich ran.
– Ich beeile mich.
Das zweite ist definitiv besser.
Faszinierend, dass so viele Wörter, die nichts miteinander zu tun zu haben scheinen, doch irgendwie verwandt sind. Man lernt nie aus – auch wenn es um die eigene Muttersprache geht.
Moment mal, wusste ich das schon, dass Deutsch deine Muttersprache ist?! Jetzt bin ich verwirrt!
Nein, Englisch ist meine Muttersprache. Ich wollte nur sagen, dass ich nicht damit gerechnet hatte, Englisch besser zu beherrschen, in dem ich Deutsch lerne. Das mit der Etymologie ist immer super interessant und diesmal ging es um englische Wörter :)
Also die Wörter, die mir ins Auge gesprungen sind, sind “sudden” (up to + to go) und “perish” (through/forward + to go). Letzteres finde ich besonders interessant, weil es mir aufgefallen ist, dass “per-” manchmal eine negative Bedeutung hat (oder dazu beiträgt), wie z.B. “persecute, perjury, perfidy”, aber auch neutral oder sogar positiv sein kann: “perennial, persuade, persevere”. Es kommt mir ähnlich vor wie “ver-” im Deutschen.
Ich musste ein bisschen überlegen, um das alles auf Deutsch zu schreiben :)
“per-” ist ja auch verwandt mit “ver-” :)
Ahhhh, verstehe. Aber dein Deutsch ist gut genug gewesen, dass ich Muttersprachler geglaubt hätte :)
I think that the tiny Luftpause between be- and -eilen (oder: Luftpäuschen?) is somewhat analogous to a (also tiny) glottal stop. Since I learned the language by ear, it never occurred to me how the word looks on the page, and it looks not unlike beeline, which looks like a cousin to beeilen.
Did you typo the word typo on purpose?
Nope :). Actually, I also forgot a “but” there!
For the record… it took me a while to understand your hint, actually, and find the instance :)
The sound replacing the “t” in words like “Bri’ain” is a glottal stop. Is that what is in beeilen?
Yes, that’s exactly what it is. I didn’t know how many of my readers knew what that is and I didn’t wanted to keep that casual, so I didn’t mention it :).
Her name would be Billie eilig if she ever wants to desperately go to the toilet. Buh dum tssss
Best Pun Award 2020 goes tooooooooo… Capital_Ash!! I knew you’d win this :D.
“Here man, you’re Flat White.”
Typo, you’re =you are. Your= belonging to you.
Not my fault!!! The interns said that :D!
“You’re” vs “your” is an endless source of entertaining humor in English.
Typo: “your flat white” not you’re
Hello,
Nice to get this article today, because “ich hab’ es eiling heute”, I must finish a project and “dat hat eigentlich Eile”. Have I used these right?
Typos now:
“And bunch of other words” (And a bunch of other words)
Great! Now “muss ich mich beeilen”…
Thanks for another great article and bis bald!
das, not dat, in “das hat eigentlich Eile”!
Yup, that was one of them. Now that you said it again… the “eigentlich” is kind of out of place here. It lacks this “wow”-moment that the English one has.
Perfectly used all three (except a cpuple of typos, which are phone typos, I assume :).
All the best for the final stretch of the project!!
And the famous:
Take your time, but hurry up!
Lass dir (ruhig) Zeit aber beeil dich!
Hahaha, ja genau!
Hello lieber Emanuell
Dieses Sprichwort ist eine Paradoxe oder ein Oxymoron : Eile mit Weile ! Wie muss man den analysieren und einfach verstehen? Was ich davon verstehe, bedeutet sowohl geduldig auch eilig haben ! Habe ich recht ?
Bis Bald
Es bedeutet, dass man nicht übertreiben soll, wenn man sich beeilt :). Aber ja, es ist ein bisschen oxymoron-mäßig
Danke!
Ich bin nicht in Eile.
Das ist gut :)!