An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/Amt

by Friedrich Kluge

Amt, n., ‘office, council, jurisdiction,’ from MidHG. ammet, older ambet, OHG. ambaht, ambahti, n., ‘service, office, occupation, divine service, mass’; a word common to the Teut. group. Comp. Goth. andbahti, ‘office, service' (from andbahts, ‘servant,’ OHG. ambaht, ‘servant'), AS. anbiht, ambiht, n., ‘office, service,’ ambiht, m., ‘servant' (obsolete at the beginning of the MidE. period), Du. ambt, OSax. ambaht-skepi, ‘service,’ ambaht-man, ‘servant.’ The relation of the common Teut. word to the Gall.-Lat. ambactus (mentioned in Caesar's Bell. Gall.), ‘vassal,’ is much disputed. The West Teut. words may be best explained from Goth. and OTeut. ándbahta-, and the genuinely Teut. aspect of such a word cannot indeed be denied, even if the origin of -bahts cannot now be determined (and- is a verbal particle, ModHG. ant-). The emphatic testimony of Festus, however, is against the Teut. origin of the Gall.-Lat. ambactus; ambactus apud Ennium lingua gallica servus appellatur. This coincides with the fact that the word can be fully explained from Kelt.; ambactus contains the Kelt. prefix amb- (Lat. amb-) ‘about’; and ag is an oft-recurring verbal root (see Acker) in Kelt., meaning ‘to go’; hence ambactus, ‘messenger’ (lit. ‘one sent hither and thither’), from which comes MidLat. ambactia, ambactiata, ‘errand’ (Ital. ambasciata, Fr. ambassade, ‘embassy’). This explanation of the Lat.-Rom. cognates makes it possible that the OTeut. class was borrowed from Kelt. and transformed (Goth. andbahts for ambahts); in any case, it was borrowed in prehistoric times (comp. Reich).