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geheuer und Ungeheuer

Language Log 2025-03-24

Two years ago, I wrote a post about "kempt and sheveled" (3/26/23).

That elicited the following offline comment by a German friend:

When I was a grad. student (Indology, linguistics)  at Erlangen-Nürnberg in the late 60s, we used to joke about the same phenomenon:
 
"What is a Geheuer?”
 
“Ungeheuer" (monster) is normal, but “Geheuer" does not exist. There only is an adjective “geheuer’ as in:
 
"Das ist mir nicht geheuer" (This is ominous to me).

My friend thought it wouldn't be funny to non-German speakers, so I set this bon mot aside and forgot about it till today.  Now, in the age of "Vintage Teslas" (an expression I saw on a bumper sticker yesterday) and whatnot, it may strike a chord with some folks.

"ungeheuer" and "geheuer" are antonyms:  "ungeheuer" means "enormous, immense, vast, gigantic, terrible", while "geheuer" means "pleasant, gentle, friendly".

Etymological background and usage notes

(from Wiktionary, with minor modifications by VHM)

heuer

From Middle High German hiure, from Old High German hiuro, hiuru, from hiu (“in this”) +‎ jāru (“year”). Compare German heute from Old High German hiu tagu ("this day").

(Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol, Liechtenstein, otherwise dialectal) this year

The word is never used in northern and central Germany. It may even—at least by less educated speakers—be misinterpreted as a synonym of heute (“today”). It does however occasionally mean heutzutage (“nowadays”) or heute (“nowadays”), for example:

    • 1654, Salomons von Golaw Deutscher Sinn-Getichte Drey Tausend, Breslau, p. 210, nr. [8]71 Heutige Welt-Kunst:
      […] Wer sich desen wil befleissen Kan Politisch heuer heissen.
                      Whoever makes an effort to do this, nowadays will be considered political. [VHM tentative tr.]

 geheuer

From Middle High German gehiure (“pleasant, gentle”), from Old High German hiuri (“friendly, lovely”), from a suffixed form of or otherwise related to Proto-West Germanic *hīw (“marriage”).

(strong nominative masculine singular geheuerer, not comparable)

  1. (chiefly in the negative) pleasant, comfortable, sure
    mir war nicht ganz geheuer ― I was not at all sure
    Bei dem Gedanken an die bevorstehende Prüfung war ihm nicht recht geheuer.
    He was not at all comfortable thinking about the coming exam.

    In modern usage, this word is always negated. The expression nicht (ganz) geheuer means ‘creepy, fishy, scary, causing uneasiness’, etc.

ungeheuer

Middle High German ungehiure, Old High German ungihiuri, un- +‎ geheuer

 

(strong nominative masculine singular ungeheurer, comparative ungeheurer, superlative am ungeheuersten)

enormous; monstrous

 

  • 1915 October, Franz Kafka, “Die Verwandlung [The Metamorphosis]”, in Die Weißen Blätter […] ‎[2], volume 2, number 10, Verlag der Weißen Bücher; republished as Joachim Neugroschel, transl., 1993:
    Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheuren Ungeziefer verwandelt.
    One morning, upon awakening from agitated dreams, Gregor Samsa found himself, in his bed, transformed into a monstrous / enormous vermin.

Ungeheuer

Nominalization of ungeheuer.

n (strong, genitive Ungeheuers, plural Ungeheuer)

  1. monster; monstrosity
    • 1886, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse‎[1], section 146:
      Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, daß er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein.
      He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

 

Selected readings