An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/Annotated/beide

by Friedrich Kluge

beide, numeral, ‘both,’ from the equivalent Middle High German beide, béde, masculine, feminine, (beidiu, neuter); Old High German beide, béde (beido, feminine, beidiu, neuter); Old High German and Middle High German have also a remarkable variant with ê (Old High German and Middle High German bêde), although ei in other instances in High German is not changed into ê before dentals, In investigating the word beide we must start from the fact that the stem of the numeral had really no dental; Anglo-Saxon bêgen, bâ, Gothic bai (Old Icelandic genitive beggja), ‘both.’ Allied in the other Aryan languages to Sanscrit ubháu, Greek ἄμφω, Latin ambo, Old Slovenian oba, Lithuanian abù, with a syllable prefixed. The German forms with a dental are undoubtedly secondary; they obtained their dental by the blending, at a comparatively late period, of the primary ba- with the forms of the article, so that Old High German bêde arose from bê and de, beidiu from bei and diu, Middle English bôthe (English both) from Anglo-Saxon bâ and þâ (Old Icelandic báþer from bai and þaiz). In Gothic ba is combined with the article ba Þó skipa, ‘both the ships’; similarly in Greek ἄμφω. By assuming such a combination in West Teutonic the following Modern High German dialectic forms in all genders are explained • Bavarian bed, bod, beid, Suabian bêd, bued, boad, Wetterau bed, bud, bad.