-lich
See also: Appendix:Variations of "lich"
German
Alternative forms
- -licht (now uncommon)
Etymology
Adjective:
Etymology tree
From Middle High German -lich, -līch, from Old High German -līh, from Proto-West Germanic *-līk. Cognate with English -ly and Dutch -lijk.[1]
Adverb:
Etymology tree
From Middle High German -līche, from Old High German -līhho.
Pronunciation
Suffix
-lich
- Used to form adjectives from verbs, to express that "something can be done with the person or thing described".
- verstehen (“to understand”) + -lich → verständlich (“that can be understood, understandable”)
- Used to form adjectives from verbs, to express that "that the person or thing described does something".
- Used to form adjectives from nouns, indicating a likening to that noun.
- Abenteuer (“adventure”) + -lich → abenteuerlich (“adventurous, risky”)
- Kind (“child”) + -lich → kindlich (“childlike”)
- Used to form adjectives from nouns describing timespans, to indicate regular repetition after each such time. The noun can optionally be qualified by a numeral.
- Jahr (“year”) + -lich → jährlich (“repeated every year, yearly”)
- zwei (“two”) + Woche (“week”) + -lich → zweiwöchentlich (“biweekly, every two weeks”)
- Used to form adjectives from nouns describing acts or properties ascribed to a certain entity, often acting as relational adjectives.
- Betrieb (“company, operations”) + -lich → betrieblich (“pertaining to or performed by the company”)
- Pflanze (“plant”) + -lich → pflanzlich (“botanical, pertaining to or produced by plants”)
- Used to form adjectives from certain adjectives to express a lesser or degree of their quality.
- Used to form adverbs from adjectives.
- bekannt (“known”) + -lich → bekanntlich (“publicly, as it is known”)
Usage notes
- When attached to words ending with an unstressed -en, an excrescent -t- has typically been inserted between it and the suffix: eigen + -lich → eigentlich. This form has been standardized for all lexicalized words of that type, however, ad-hoc derivations, especially in the sense of relational adjectives, are likely to not feature it.
Derived terms
See also
References
- ^ Kluge, Friedrich (1989), “-lich”, 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
Middle English
Etymology 1
Suffix
-lich
- alternative form of -ly (“adjectival suffix”)
Etymology 2
Suffix
-lich
- alternative form of -ly (“adverbial suffix”)
Categories:
- German terms derived from Proto-West Germanic
- German terms inherited from Proto-West Germanic
- German terms derived from Proto-Germanic
- German terms inherited from Proto-Germanic
- German terms derived from Middle High German
- German terms inherited from Middle High German
- German terms derived from Old High German
- German terms derived from Proto-Indo-European
- German terms inherited from Old High German
- German terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *leyg- (like)
- German 1-syllable words
- German terms with IPA pronunciation
- German terms with audio pronunciation
- German lemmas
- German suffixes
- German adjective-forming suffixes
- German adverb-forming suffixes
- Middle English variant lemmas