2774: Dear and Teuer Jul 25, 2024

The words ‘dear’ in English and ‘teuer’ (expensive) in German both originate from the same Proto-Germanic root, but over time they have diverged in meaning and usage. Both ‘dear’ and ‘teuer’ trace their origins back to the Proto-Germanic word *diurijaz, which means ‘precious’ or ‘valuable.’ While the sense of money being valuable (in the sentimental sense) might be clear by itself as a gradual progression in German, the English usage was also reinforced by Old Norse ‘dyr,’ meaning ‘precious.’ Likewise, ‘expensive’ (i.e., teuer) is divergent from the original sense in that it is the reaction to something being valued, but this would be the same sort of relationship as another doublet pair with ‘wet’ being the experience of ‘water,’ each word coming from the same root. ‘Dear’ and ‘teuer’ are yet another of countless examples of cognates with understandably similar but by no means identical meanings.