-heit

Alternative forms

• -keit

Etymology

From Middle High German -heit, from Old High German -heit, from Proto-West Germanic *-haidu, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *haiduz (“personality, character, manner, way”).^[1] Cognate with Dutch -heid, English -hood, Danish -hed.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /-haɪ̯t/, [haɪ̯t]
• The suffix has secondary stress when it follows an unstressed syllable and often also when it precedes one. When it is entirely unstressed, the /h/ may be unpronounced in common speech.

• Audio:

  (file)

Suffix

-heit f (genitive -heit, plural -heiten)

1. Converts an adjective into a noun and usually denotes an abstract quality of the adjectival root. It is often equivalent to the English suffixes -ness, -th, -ty, -dom:

   ‎schön (“beautiful”) + ‎-heit → ‎Schönheit (“beauty”)

   ‎neu (“new”) + ‎-heit → ‎Neuheit (“novelty”)

2. Converts concrete nouns into abstract nouns:

   ‎Kind (“child”) + ‎-heit → ‎Kindheit (“childhood”)

   ‎Christ (“Christian”) + ‎-heit → ‎Christenheit (“Christendom”)

References

Further reading

• Friedrich Kluge (1883) “-heit”, in John Francis Davis, transl., Etymological Dictionary of the German Language, published 1891
• -heit on the German Wikipedia.Wikipedia ^de

Etymology

From Middle Norwegian -heit, a borrow from Middle Low German -heit. Compare with Norwegian Bokmål -het, Swedish -het and Danish -hed. Ultimately from Proto-Germanic *haiduz.

Suffix

-heit f

1. (colloquial) creates abstract nouns from adjectives
2. (rare) creates concrete nouns

References

• “-heit” in The Nynorsk Dictionary.