Hello everyone,
and welcome to our German Word of the Day. This time we’ll haft a look at the meaning of
have
Oh wait, I mixed it up. How stupid of me. I meant to say we’ll haft a look at the meaning of
hav… crap, AGAIN!
What’s that?
A siren.
Oh no, it’s the Bad Intro Police! They’re coming to arrest me. No fair! I ain’t going back to jail. I’m gonna hide inside the look at the meaning of
haft
Quick, follow me…
Phew, got away just in time :).
So, we’ll talk a bit about the haft-family today, and maybe you caught on to it in the intro already – haft is related to have. The very origin is the super mega turbo ancient Indo-European root *kap. And just in case you’re confused how a k can change to an h… the two are actually not that far. Just think of a Russian accent for example. The h is more like ch there, and from that it is not very far to a k. Here, let me try and show you… I’ll go from hallo to kallo :)
Not sure if you can hear it but they’re definitely on the same “line”, if that makes sense.
Anyways, the core idea of the root grasping seizing and it’s the origin for a whole bunch of words like capture, catch, hawk, heave, accept or perception. In fact, English actually even has the word haft as in handle of a tool.
The German haft has more to do with capturing and catching though, because one of its main contexts nowadays is… jail.
There’s the verb verhaften which means to arrest (in a police sense)… the police grasps the robber… they “have” him. And there’s the noun die Haft, which is abstract noun for being in jail or arrested and it’s part of a whole lot of compounds.
- Sie sind verhaftet.
- You’re under arrest. (lit.: “arrested”)
- Wegen Verdachts auf Verstoß gegen das “Wer den Kaffee alle macht, macht neuen”-Gesetz sitzt der Manager in Untersuchungshaft.
- Because of suspicion of violation of the “whoever finishes the coffee has to make new coffee”-act the manager is in custody (lit: investigation detainment)
- Weil er beim Meeting gefurzt hat, wird Thomas von der Büropolizei verhaftet und muss eine Stunde in Einzelhaft.
- Because he farted at the meeting, Thomas is being arrested by the office police and has to go into solitary confinement for an hour.
Thomas has a new job by the way… some start up or something. Sounds really weird.
Anyway, jail is not the only context for haft-words.
They also can express a broader sense of liability. Here are two VERY common examples from daily life.
- GmbH ist kurz für Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung.
- GmbH is short for company with limited liability.
- Eltern haften für ihre Kinder.
- Parents are (legally) responsible for their children.
And the first one is a VERY common form of a company; I think it’s somewhat similar to a limited (ltd) and the second one is a phrase you can find for instance on the fence of a construction site to make it “official” that parents have to pay if their kids … I don’t know… topple the crane or something. The parents would need a good Haftpflichtversicherung then. And don’t gimme that “Uh, word sooo long”-whine. Third party liability insurance is not much better. It actually has more syllables. It’s just that in German the parts stick together.
Oh and speaking of sticking… that’s also an idea that can be expressed by haft-words.
- Silikon haftet nur auf absolut trockenen Oberflächen.
- Silicon sticks, adheres properly when the surface is completely free of grease.
- Das deutsche Wort für Sticky note ist Haftnotiz.
- Swan couples stay together for life.
(I went for a somewhat free translation here)
- Das Geheimnis von Hafthaaren ist die Van-der-Waals-Kraft. Deshalb fallen Geckos nicht von der Wand.
- The secret behind adhesive hairs is the Van-der-Waals-force. That’s why geckos won’t fall off of walls.
Hmm… shouldn’t that force be called An-der-Waals-force?!
Get it, get it… because it makes the gecko stay on the wall?
… … …
uhm… yeah… I uh… let’s just move.
The words we’ve had so far were okay but nothing overly fascinating. What makes haft REALLY useful is its use as and ending.
-haft
Let’s start with a few examples.
- Das Restaurant hat einen zweifelhaften Ruf.
- The restaurant has a dubious reputation.
- “Willst du ein Stück Kuchen?”
“Nee, ich hab’ mehr Appetit auf was herzhaftes.” - “Do you want a piece of cake?”
“Nah, I feel more like something hearty.”
(not sweet but salty greasy)
- “Maria, dein Essen ist mal wieder echt ekelhaft.”
“Mag sein, aber es ist sehr nahrhaft.” - “Maria, your dish is once again really disgusting.”
“May be, but it is very nutritious.”
And let’s continue with a few more examples.
- Was tun gegen krankhafte Eifersucht?
- What to do against pathological jealousy?
- Der IT-Experte sucht fieberhaft nach einer Lösung.
- The IT expert frantically searches for a solution.
- “Thomas hat sich die Beine gewachst.”
“Ernsthaft?” - “Thomas waxed his legs.”
“Seriously?”
And let’s wrap up the section with a few examp… okay kidding. Of course we need to take a closer look at that. Did you get an idea of what -haft does as an ending? If you didn’t, then don’t worry, it’s kind of hard to see with these examples that -haft actually expresses a similar idea as -full or -some. If you say that something is x-haft, then you’re saying that it is like x or has x in it.
And why? Like… what does that have to do with the haft we had?
Well, it’s the idea of of sticking. The “quality” of X, the characteristic sticks to the whatever you call x-haft. Like… if jealousy is krankhaft, then the quality of sickness sticks on the jealousy.
Or actually, remember the connection to to have? If the weather is traumhaft, then it has some quality of dream to it. If your flatmate’s desire for a clean kitchen is zwanghaft is “has compulsion”. Does it make sense?
Cool. There are quite a lot of really common words with -haft and if you haven’t noticed so far, you will now see them everywhere.
But -haft is not as flexible when it comes to inventing new words as -mäßig, which can have the same function. You can try and invent new words with -haft, and you’ll probably be understood but there’s a fair chance that it won’t sound native-haft ;). Like… batman-mäßig sounds fine, batman-haft will be understood sounds a bit odd.
Cool.
So now we know haft in its different forms, and we could just wrap it up here. But that would mean missing out on a nice little connection. You know… one of those connections that are hidden in plain sight and that make a native German speaker go like “Oh wow, this word is related to haft?! That is so cool. Do you wanna have sex with me?” **
I mean… who wouldn’t want to know what “this word” is. So let’s take a look.
(**Reaction dramatized. Native speaker might not propose intercourse in response to being told the connection)
heft-words
We’ve learned that haften can be about sticking to something. Heften is kind of the causative version of that. So it’s about making something stick to something. The verb itself isn’t used much though except in the context of paper.
A Heftklammer is a word a stapler clip, abheften and einheften are about putting paper into a folder and most importantly, there’s the noun das Heft. Heft can translate to booklet, magazine or notebook but in essence a Heft is a bunch of paper stapled together in a book-like way, but not as thick.
- Der Sekretär heftet den Brief ab.
- The secretary files the letter (into a folder).
- Thomas hat seine Pornohefte gut vor Maria versteckt.
- Thomas has hidden his porn magazines well from Maria.
- Alle Schüler müssen ein Muttiheft haben.
- All pupils are required to have “a small notebook through which mother and teacher communicate”.
(Is there a word for this in English??? :)
And then there’s Heft as part of a common idiom.
- Ich nehme das Heft in die Hand.
And here, we’re not talking about a notebook. This Heft is the counterpart of the English haft (handle of a tool) – nowadays usually called der Griff – but in the idiom it’s still alive and the phrase means that you take charge of a situation. You’re calling the shots.
Two more Tequilas please! Double!
Now you might be like “So you’re saying if I tell a native speaker that Heft is related to Haft, they will want to have sex with me? That’s hard to believe, Emanuel.”
Well, first of all, I never said that.
Second of all, if you call enough shots, they might.
And third of all, the real surprise connection, the one that makes people go like “Oh wow!” is not the word Heft – it’s the word heftig and the core idea of that is high intensity.
- Ich hatte lange nicht mehr so einen heftigen Kater.
- It’s been a while that I had such an intense, strong hangover.
- Eigentlich hab’ ich kein Problem mit Horrorfilmen, aber die Szene mit dem schlafenden Einhorn war echt heftig. Da musste ich weggucken.
- Normally, I don’t have a problem with horror movies, but the scene with the sleeping unicorn was intense, crazy. I had to look away there.
- Der Wind an der Küste ist echt heftig.
- The wind at the coast is intense.
And it’s also used as a sort of slang choice for crazy in the context of crazy events.
- “Hast du schon gehört… Maria wurde gestern gefeuert.”
“Heftig! Die hat doch grad erst eine Gehaltserhöhung bekommen.” - “Have you heard… Maria was fired yesterday.”
“What?! That’s crazy… she like just got a raise, right?”
Now, we should be a bit more precise and say it is about high intensity with some notion of disturbance or violence in it. Because heftig wouldn’t work in the context of an intense, deep eye contact. Maybe think of an earth quake. That’s a good example for something that can be heftig.
And now the big question is of course: what? I mean… what does the core idea of haft, the idea of sticking, grasping have to do with intense wind.
Well, it’s the notion of strength. Heftig used to express stuff like stable, steady, persistent. That implies a certain forte and over time the word simply lost the notion of steady.
Tadah. Well, takes a little mind bending but nothing too heftig ;).
And that’s it for today. This was our look at the family of haft and as we’ve seen it has quite the…
“Are you Emanuel?”
Uh… yes.
“Sir, Agent Colter my name, BPPD. You’re under arrest.”
WHAT? Oh… oh no, the bad intro police, they found me.
“No Sir, we’re from the Bad Pun Police Department. You’re accused of committing two particularly bad puns, namely An-der-Waals force and using the idiom ‘calling the shots’ followed by the word ‘Tequila’. And additional charges of TUI … teaching under the influence of red wine. Please step away from the microphone and come with us.”
And I’m being arrested for puns?!?! Das ist heftig!
“Sir, please come with us or we’ll have to handcuff you.”
Damn it. I gotta go… if you have any questions or suggestions or if you want to share how native speakers reacted to the reveal that haft and heftig are related, just leave me a comment.
I’ll be back. They got nothin’ on me. #freemanuel.
further reading:
** vocab **
haften – stick to a surface, be legally liable
verhaften – arrest
die Haftanstalt – the jail (official term)
die Untersuchungshaft – the detention
die Einzelhaft – the solitary confinement
zauberhaft – magical
dauerhaft – for a long time
krankhaft – pathological(ly)
ernsthaft – seriously
zwanghaft – compulsive
das Heft – the notebook (small, think), also: handle of a tool (old word)
abheften – file away (put away into a folder)
das Comicheft – the comic book (thin)
der Hefter – the folder
die Heftklammer – the stapler pin
heftig – intense(ly), violent(ly) (figurative sense, NOT actual violence)
der Griff- the handle of a tool/weapon, the haft
great post! I love learning while having a good laugh! Emanuel, you are awesome!
Das ist der Plan :)!
aaron | September 6, 2017 at 4:39 pm | Reply
Mir ist inzwischen eingefallen, dass -haftig vielleicht von -haftigkeit kommt und lässt einfach ein Adjektiv aus einem Nomen mit der Endung -haftigkeit bilden?
es gibt den “Leibhaftigen”, den dessen Namen nicht genannt werden soll…. ;-)
(den Teufel…)
Andersrum. “-haftigkeit” kommt von “-haftig” :)
Emanuel
Can you check that this is on your word lists please. I couldn’t find it.
cheers
Steve
Hello. Thanks for a great post,as usual. Re the Muttiheft, I was a teacher and a parent of school-age children. In Britain communication between parent and school happens in the children’s homework diary, unless it’s something requiring more urgency or aavdiscretion. The diary is signed weekly by the parent and checked by the teacher, so it would be clear that the message had been seen
Yeah, that sounds exactly like a Muttiheft :)
Ich bin dem Wort “leibhaftig” in einem Buch begegnet und konnte dessen Bedeutung aufgrund der Bedeutung von -haft herauskriegen. Allerdings scheint -haftig seltener als -haft vorzukommen. Ich habe bloß 4 Vorkommen im Wörterbuch gefunden – leibhaftig, schattenhaftig, unwahrhaftig und wahrhaftig. Gibt es weitere?
Mir ist inzwischen eingefallen, dass -haftig vielleicht von -haftigkeit kommt und lässt einfach ein Adjektiv aus einem Nomen mit der Endung -haftigkeit bilden?
Nee, -haftigkeit wird von -haftig gebildet, nicht andersrum :)
Nee, mir fallen auch keine ein. Und “schattenhaftig” hab’ ich auch noch nie gehört, eher “schattenhaft”.
I have never heard of “Muttiheft” used here in Berlin. Where I work they all say, “Mitteilungsheft” In Engl. I would say, “communication book” or “information book”.
Maybe it’s a GDR thing :). Are you a teacher?
I’ve always wondered what exactly “herzhaft” means – other Anglophones can chime in here, but to me “hearty” doesn’t sound so much like a description of flavor as one of… I don’t know, texture or something. Like, it’s typical to refer to stew as “hearty,” which might involve it being flavorful, but to me it mostly sounds like it’s warm and filling, thick rather than soupy. Hearty food is comfort food.
My sense of “herzhaft” is something like “savory,” in contrast to sweetness. But then, “greasy” would probably often be a component of “hearty,” so I don’t know.
Maybe it’s in between savory and hearty. Savory for the mere description of taste and hearty for the feeling attached. “Herzhaft” does have a vibe of warming, strengthening, nourishing to it, that savory lacks because it’s so technical (to my ears, anyway)
Off topic but I really have to ask:
today, I was listening to NPRs (the1a, to be precise) and the host said this:
– “What produces the most angst, what makes the parents freaked the most out…”
I was baffled at “freaked the most out”. The speaker is American native speaker with no knowledge of German. Is that phrasing a slip of the tongue, or just rare, or even common? Thanks a lot!!
“Freak out” started in the drug slang of the 60s. It involved irrational behavior or emotional instability, possibly panic, or even disconnection from reality, like on LSD. Now it has come to mean losing emotional control due to excitement, shock, fear, joy, despair, etc. It’s very often used negatively, as in “Don’t freak out, man!”
It has also been over-used somewhat, so the original extreme meaning has been softened quite a bit. “Don’t freak out!”, at least as far as I have seen, is most often a dismissal of someone’s objections to something, usually directed at parents. It can also be used to describe one’s reaction to some unusual, usually negative event. “Seeing my friend laying there unconscious freaked me out.” “I was freaked out by all the cockroaches we found under the sink.”
I have no idea how common it is, but it’s still around. “Freaked the most out” is an unusual wording, but most N Americans would know what the speaker was referring to.
What struck me is that it is how a German would say it. It’s like having a prefix at the end. How does “freaked the most out” compare to “freaked quickly out”. How wrong does either one sound?
It would sound odd to me – I’d assume it was a slip of the tongue, and that the speaker meant “makes the parents the most freaked out.”
That said, there’s one parallel to that construction that is idiomatic (if very colloquial and vulgar): “freak(ed) the [expletive] out.” Not that I’m suggesting an NPR host would ever have subconsciously wanted to say “what makes the parents freak the f*** out”…
“Freaked the most out” is really awkward sounding. If I had to compose that sentence, I would have said, “…what makes the parents freak out the most”. Note my switch to the infinitive, which works better in the subordinate clause (or whatever it’s called). Same with “freaked quickly out” – it isn’t as awkward as the other one, but still off. It sounds much more natural to have the adverb before or after this set phrase, as in “freaked out quickly” or “quickly freaked out”.
So, it would seem that you could insert a direct object between ‘freak’ and ‘out’, but nothing else. I think the speaker just tripped over his tongue and did the best he could to recover it. :-)
I love how your discussions draw my attention to the quirky bits of English.
RuthE my concern here is that you use ‘laying’ rather than ‘lying’.Was your friend an unconscious hen?
Haha! Could have gone either way, Otto. I have yet to keep those straight. :-D
Good morning everyone. I am a student from Taiwan. Thanks to German is easy community so that I am able to learn with the website without putting pressure on my father. Have a good day learning German!
The Muttiheft sounds like a great idea, but I’ve never heard of it here in North America. (I’ve been around a while, and my mother was a school teacher. :-) ) I did a Google search and didn’t come up with anything similar. There are regular parent-teacher conferences, but they’re done in person. These days something like the Muttiheft would give the district lawyer apoplexy. I suppose they could do it on line with passwords.
Thank you for this one. I had never gotten the heft/haft connection before, and you’ve expanded heft for me as well.
Hope your vacation went well.
Something similar is, or was, used in Australia (at least some of it), but only for children with identified problems. I can only recall hearing such a thing called a “communication book”. All children having a Muttiheft sounds much kinder, though I wonder if anyone feels the need to call it something different to avoid upsetting any children without mothers on hand. That would surely happen here, even if Mutti is thought of as referring to the book rather than its reader.
“All children having a Muttiheft sounds much kinder”..
That sentence really had me confused for a second :D. I was like “children sounds children??”
Also, very good point of you to raise awareness of the discriminatory nature of “Muttiheft” ;). I guess, Elternheft would be the proper 2017 choice. Or better yet, “Erziehungsberechtigtenheft”, because that then includes kids raised by grandparents or uncles and aunts or orphans.
Well, you know what they say: no matter how kind your children are, German children will always be Kinder.
I’m pretty much with RuthE here – it’s just unknown in the US, as far as I know. (Like the Mutterpass, which we discovered through having a child in Berlin.) I guess something like “parent-teacher notebook” would be comprehensible and a little shorter, but that’s about the best I can do.
Wow, I just found that “Muttiheft” actually has an entry in Wikipedia… the ENGLISH one XD
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muttiheft
Long time reader, first time subscriber! Wanted to stop in and say hi, and say that I love your pieces on verb prefixes. Nothing has helped expand my foundation than hearing a german speaker explain the logic behind the grammar. Vielen Dank!
Cool freut mich zu hören :). Danke für das tolle Feedback!
Of no significance to haft, but being an inveterate nitpicker I can’t let your comment about “h” in a Russian accent pass without comment.
There actually is no “h” in Russian so it’s unsurprising that Russian pronunciation of “h” in other languages tends to be different. In Russian versions of foreign names with “h” either “g” (Г} or “kh” (X) is used instead. Mostly “g” I think. Russian Wikipedia has Frans Hals as Франс Халс, with a “kh”. The Russian writer Alexander Herzen is Ге́рцен in Russian, with a “g”. German Titov, second human to orbit earth, could, and perhaps should, be rendered as Herman(n) in English. ….
Thanks for another fascinating post including another little physics joke. :)
Ah, that’s interesting. I didn’t know Russian had no “h”. I just thought they have this very “chard” way of saying it. Thanks for the insights :). Do you speak Russian?
Not really, beyond formulaic pleasantries and expressions of ignorance, but I am intrigued by it.
I’ve now also found Heinrich Heine and Hermann Hesse on Bикипедия (Wikipedia). They both get the full “g” treatment.
Heavy was used like crazy, intense or awesome in the 70’s. Funny how it uses two of the haft meanings. And I might want a second opinion on the Haftnotiz example. :) And thank you to everybody again for the free membership that lets me be here!
Wait, which two meanings does it use :)?
Sorry. I meant that you say one meaning to mean another. And the connection is not obvious.
i know a song in german, it goes something like this: “du bist verhaftet wegen sexy” ;)
Den Song kenn ich nicht, aber das Problem hab’ ich ständig. Zum Glück hab’ ich einen guten Anwalt XD
In English,we can say.” I like this hammer but the other one has more heft”
It feels better in the hand, and will strike a good blow. which probably comes from the design of the handle!
Oh really? That’s actually a really great connection to heftig then :).
There’s actually also the word “hefty,” which basically just means “heavy.” (Can be a polite way to describe a fat guy, though that might be a little out-of-date.) One of the most popular brands of garbage bags in the U.S. is also Hefty.
Related to Tony’s comment, you can also “heft” a hammer or other thing that you might swing. I think that would just mean “lift” and/or get ready to swing it.
Quick addendum on “hefty”: in case it wasn’t clear, it doesn’t sound nearly as serious as “heftig.” Although one idiomatic use that comes to mind is “a hefty penalty,” which would be a serious punishment or large fine for breaking a rule or law.
“heft a hammer”… that’s great because it brings all the meanings together, you have it, you heave it, on the heft, ready for a hefty blow :). Also, I really don’t understand how I could forget about “hefty”. I do know it and it is soooo similar in sound. Bad brain, very disappointed :).
Do you have an idea for Muttiheft by any chance? Are you familiar with the word? Like… is you kid in school already and do they use it?