-heit

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See also: heit

German

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Middle High German -heit, from Old High German -heit, from Proto-West Germanic *-haidu, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *haiduz (“personality, character, manner, way”). Cognate with Dutch -heid, English -hood, Danish -hed.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /-haɪ̯t/,
  • The suffix has secondary stress when it follows an unstressed syllable and often also when it precedes one. When it is entirely unstressed, the /h/ may be unpronounced in common speech.
  • Audio(file)

Suffix

-heit f (genitive -heit, plural -heiten)

  1. Converts an adjective into a noun and usually denotes an abstract quality of the adjectival root. It is often equivalent to the English suffixes -ness, -th, -ty, -dom:
    ‎schön (“beautiful”) + ‎-heit → ‎Schönheit (“beauty”)
    ‎neu (“new”) + ‎-heit → ‎Neuheit (“novelty”)
  2. Converts concrete nouns into abstract nouns:
    ‎Kind (“child”) + ‎-heit → ‎Kindheit (“childhood”)
    ‎Christ (“Christian”) + ‎-heit → ‎Christenheit (“Christendom”)

Usage notes

  • While -heit is the normal form of this suffix, it becomes -keit after certain adjectival suffixes. These are -bar, -ig, -isch, -lich, -sam. For example: ‎nützlich (“useful”) + ‎-heit → ‎Nützlichkeit (“utility”).
  • Adjectives ending in unstressed -el, -er usually take -keit as well: ‎eitel (“vain”) + ‎-heit → ‎Eitelkeit (“vanity”), ‎mager (“meagre”) + ‎-heit → ‎Magerkeit (“meagreness”). However, there are a handful of exceptions, e.g. Dunkelheit (“darkness”), Sicherheit (“safety”).
  • Sometimes -ig- is added to the adjective and the suffix thus becomes -keit. This is the general rule with adjectives in -haft and -los: ‎fehlerhaft (“faulty”) + ‎-heit → ‎Fehlerhaftigkeit (“faultiness”). There is also a fairly large number of other adjectives that follow this pattern: ‎müde (“tired”) + ‎-heit → ‎Müdigkeit (“tiredness”). Two forms may exist for some adjectives, occasionally with a semantic distinction, e.g. Neuheit (“novelty”) versus Neuigkeit (“news”).

Declension

Declension of -heit
singular plural
indef. def. noun def. noun
nominative eine die -heit die -heiten
genitive einer der -heit der -heiten
dative einer der -heit den -heiten
accusative eine die -heit die -heiten

Derived terms

German terms suffixed with -heit

References

  1. ^ Friedrich Kluge (1989) “-heit”, in Elmar Seebold, editor, Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache [Etymological Dictionary of the German Language] (in German), 22nd edition, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, →ISBN.

Further reading

Norwegian Nynorsk

Etymology

From Middle Norwegian -heit, a borrow from Middle Low German -heit. Compare with Norwegian Bokmål -het and Swedish -het.

Suffix

-heit f

  1. (colloquial) creates abstract nouns from adjectives
  2. (rare) creates concrete nouns

Derived terms

Norwegian Nynorsk terms suffixed with -heit

References

Wikious
Boobota
Sagapedia