An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/lesen
lesen, vb., ‘to gather, glean, read,’ from MidHG. lësen, OHG. lësan, ‘to pick out, pick up, read,’ also ‘to narrate, relate.’ Goth. lisan, galisan, and AS. lesan, simply mean ‘to gather, collect’; from the latter E. to lease is derived. So too in earlier OIc. lesa merely signifies ‘to collect, glean.’ There can be no doubt that this was the prim. meaning of HG. lesen; hence it is probable that the common Teut. lesan, ‘to gather up,’ is connected with Lith. lesù (lèsti), ‘to peck, pick up grains of corn.’ There is no relation between Goth. lisan, ‘to gather,’ and lais, ‘I know,’ laisjan, ‘to teach’ (see lehren, and lernen). The development of the meaning ‘to read’ from ‘to gather’ is indeed analogous to that of Lat. lego and Gr. λέγω, which the HG. significations combine. Yet the state of OTeut. culture affords a finer and wider explanation of lesen, ‘legere’; since the modern term Buchstabe, ‘letter,’ is inherited from OTeut. times, when runic signs were scratched on separate twigs, the gathering of these twigs, which were strewn for purposes of divination, was equiv. to ‘reading (lesen) the runes.’ Hence OTeut. lesan expressed the action described by Tacitus (Germ. 10) as “surculos ter singulos tollit;” in pre-hist. G. it also signified “sublatos secundum impressam ante notam interpretatur.” It is worthy of remark too that the OTeut. dials. have no common term for ‘to read,’ and this proves that the art was not learnt until the Teutons had separated into the different tribes. It is also certain that runic writing was of foreign, probably of Italian origin. The Goth used the expressions siggwan, ussiggwan, ‘to read,’ the Englishman AS. rœ̂dan, E. to read; the former probably signified orig. ‘loud delivery,’ the latter ‘to guess the runic characters.’