German

How to spell german

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce german

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does german mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to Germany, its people, or its language.

German in a sentence

• The german economy is the largest in Europe.

• She studied german literature at university for three years.

Where does german come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This spelling actually sits at the meeting point of two Latin strands. The nationality sense traces to the Latin Germani, the name Roman writers used for the tribes living east of the Rhine; its ultimate source is genuinely uncertain and may be Celtic or Gaulish rather than Latin itself, which is why scholars hedge on its literal meaning. The older kinship sense, seen in the phrase cousin-german, comes from the Latin adjective germanus, meaning 'of the same parents' or 'genuine', built on germen 'bud, sprout, offspring', the same root that gives us 'germ' and 'germinate'. English took both threads in through Old French during the medieval period, the kinship word arriving by the 1300s and the national name strengthening later. The shared root germen, the idea of something sprouting from a common stock, also explains the closely linked word 'germane', which once meant 'akin' before it came to mean 'relevant'. The simple spelling rarely trips writers; the real point of interest is that one short word carries two separate ancestries.

How the word is built

• germ- (from Latin germanus: of the same stock, genuine)
• -an (suffix forming the people/adjective sense)