Re: Etymology of "Ketzer"


"Heidi Graw" <heidigraw@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:ZK3gg.224973$WI1.34863@xxxxxxxxxxx

"Pierre Jelenc" <rcpj@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:e5qfep$b0u$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Heidi Graw <heidigraw@xxxxxxx> writes:

I'm curious about the etymology of the German word "Ketzer" which means
"heretic" in English.

Pierre wrote:
Said to be from the Greek "katharos" (pure, unblemished) which was
applied
during the middle-ages to various neo-manichean religious sects (Cathars,
Albigeois). However Hellquist's Swedish Etymological Dictionary points
rather to a Middle-Low-German "quetsen" (to defile, pollute, desecrate)
that is akin to German "quetschen" (to crush).

Thanks, Pierre.

I had come across information that claims "Ketzer" was a German word play
on "Cathars"... Kat-ars...kitty butts.
Word play is simply that...word play designed to insult the Cathars. Word
play is not scientific etymology. Apparently, tales were told that
heretics (witches) kissed kitty butts and that the word "Ketzer" is in
reference to a cat worshipping cult.

Well this is obviously wrong - the idea that a word play based on the Modern
English plural of 'Cathar' to the Modern English words 'cat' and 'arse'
could yield a German word like 'Ketzer' is clearly ridiculous, as you
rightly say.

Going from quetschen to Ketzen appears more reliable and realistic. If
anyone else has more information to add about this word, I'd love to hear
about it.

This I find less plausible than you do. There is no reason why 'quetschen'
should give 'Ketzer' at all - the sound changes are highly unlikely, and you
certainly wouldn't get both reflexes. It could only work if there was a
double borrowing - if another language borrowed 'quetschen' or its ancestor,
lost the labial element and moved the affricate, and then this was later
re-borrowed back into German. If this were the case, it should be relatively
easy to find the other language, and my guess is that the dictionaries would
know about it. It's not an uncommon scenario, but it's also far more
complicated than seems likely on the evidence; I certainly wouldn't commit
to this myself unless I knew what the intermediary language was.

Based on the evidence presented here, the most likely seems that it comes
from 'Katharos', from a language that pronounced the stem [katar-] (which
could well have been as the name for the group). The change of [t] > [ts]
(written <tz>) is absolutely regularly in this position in German, as part
of the High German sound shift. With an early enough date for the borrowing
(before 800 I think) the data fits perfectly.

Where the analysis you referred to was wrong was in pretending this was some
sort of pun; that is clearly the view of the uninformed (with a bit of
linguistic nationalism and/or linguistic racism to boot). But the evidence
does seem to support the idea that that was the origin of the word.

Neeraj Mathur


.