An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/Annotated/gedeihen

by Friedrich Kluge

gedeihen, verb, ‘to thrive, prosper,’ from the equivalent Middle High German gedîhen, Old High German gidîhan, strong verb; Gothic gaþeilan, Anglo-Saxon geþeón (contracted from geþîhan), ‘to thrive’; the old Anglo-Saxon form points to the fact that the verbal stem was originally nasalised; ñ before h is everywhere suppressed in Teutonic, thus þîhan for þiñhan. The corresponding factitive *þhangjan remained in Old Saxon, where thengian means ‘to complete’; on the suppression of the nasal the e gradation passed into the î gradation in Gothic an High German. The simple form þeihan, ‘to thrive,’ is still known in Gothic. On account of its meaning, gedeihen (root þenh, pre-Teutonic tenk, tek, in Lithuanian tenkù, -tèkti, ‘I have enough,’ as well as in Irish tocad, Welsh tynged, ‘fortune,’ from the primary form tongeto-) cannot be be connected with the root τεκ in τέκνον (see Degen).—