das Märchen

(noun)

Meanings

1.
the fairytale
(Originally, it's the "cute" form of "die Mär", which is a fable or myth.)

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Root: *me-

The original sense of this root was:

big, large

It’s the origin of the words more and most, which for some reason started being used as comparative forms for the now obsolete word mickle.

The root might have a connection to the root *meg-, which was about the idea of great, and which is the origin of a rather large language tree with words like major, mega, maxi and magni- as well as Mister and much.
There’s no evidence for this connection, but it would make a lot of sense.

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