Daus (playing card)

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Four houses
Acorn dhows
Württemberg sheet: Schellen-Daus
Playing card with sow and dhow of bells (1573)

The Daus (plural: Douses ) is the card with the highest card value in the German card game . Its name may have gotten over the dice game, in which the two eyes on the dice also as dhows were called.

Unlike the ace , the dhow corresponds to “two”, which is why two hearts, two bells, etc. can be found on the card. In many areas it is not only equated with the ace, but is also called that (basically incorrectly). Colloquially in southern Germany - possibly because of the depiction of a wild boar on the Schelln-Ass or Schelln-Daus - it is also referred to as "pig".

Egg the dhows! (also: Was der Daus!) is a proverbial exclamation that expresses astonishment, astonishment but also anger. The assumption that it is an exclamation that comes from the language of card players is wrong, although it is found more often.

The dhow in the card and dice game

German sheet Bay acorn.svg Bay gras.svg Bay Herz.svg Bay schellen.svg OUT
French sheet SuitClubs.svg SuitSpades.svg Suit Hearts.svg SuitDiamonds.svg ASS (French "as", English "ace")

The word Daus as a name for the two eyes on a dice has been in use since the 12th century. It comes from the late Old High German , later Middle High German word dûs , which was borrowed from the northern French word daus . This corresponds to the French deux , which arose from the Latin duos to duo "two". With the introduction of playing cards in the German-speaking area towards the end of the 14th century, the word was also transferred to the card with the value two. This card became the highest playing card in the German card game, the ace.

On the German playing card with the two, the dhow , a pig or a sow is often depicted. While after Friedrich Kluge it is unclear how the card got the name Daus , because there are no rules for the card game from the Middle Ages, Marianne Rumpf states: The word Daus is a term that has been adopted from the game of dice. In contrast to the dice game, in which the two was a low throw and counted little, the Daus card played a special role as a trick card, because it could even triumph the king. The early New High German author Johann Fischart wrote : “I threw out the Esz [Ass], Saw [Sau] and Dauss der Schellen, Klee, Hertz; but here I stop for the sting with the Eyel-Saw, which is now stirring ” . The name “pig” was also used for the card, as can be read in the rhyming chronicle about Duke Ulrich von Württemberg , which also proves that the dhow like the ace in the modern Skat game scored eleven points: “The Kenig all cards stab should. That is from the upper bite vff the pig, it would then be aylfe yelled ” .

Early evidence of depictions of a pig on the card can be found as early as the 15th century, from which the cards bells and acorns depicting a pig have been preserved. Games with a pig or a sow on the card with the two bells are also preserved in the Swiss National Museum in Zurich from 1525 and with a game made by the Viennese card painter Hans Forster from 1573 . A game from 1573, on which the pig is on the two of hearts, comes from a Frankfurt manufactory . Johann Leonhard Frisch documented the connection between dhows and sow in his German-Latin dictionary from 1741: “Sau in the game of charts, from the figure of a sow, which is painted on the acorn dhow, of which the other dhows are also called sows. "

How the pig found the playing card is unknown. Hellmut Rosenfeld suspected that the “Preissau” was the godfather, who played a role at shooting festivals and was associated with the last sheaf with a kind of vegetation magic . The name Sau is possibly a corruption of the word Daus , and the picture of a pig on the playing cards means only a pictorial representation of this etymological development.

According to Marianne Rumpf, the name comes from a Baden dialect, because there the “S” is pronounced like a “Sch” and the word “Dausch” is used for a mother pig or a sow. "[One] can ... imagine with some imagination that the players in the heat of the game when playing the trump card ... emphasized their triumph by pronouncing the card name." The Brothers Grimm prove in their dictionary that the word "exchange" for the four sheets of cards that are called "sew and swap" were used. It is possible that card painters were inspired by the word "Dausch" and illustrated the free area under the color symbol with a sow.

From the language of the card players the expression "D houses" (also "Deuser") for coins, which has been documented since the 19th century, probably comes from, because in a game that is about money, the aces are worth real money. The proverb “Houses build houses”, which has been used since 1850, is to be understood in a very similar way, because with one trick with several aces the number of points required to win is quickly achieved.

Daus as an exclamation

Egg the dhows! an exclamation of amazement has been documented since the 15th century. At first it meant “cheater”, in the Low German language also “devil”, the meaning “devil guy” has been attested since the 18th century. It is possible that some of these meanings contain a word for “demon” which has been attested in the Gallo-Roman languages and which was “dusius” in Middle Latin . The called in the phrase Daus would therefore be a euphemistic distortion of the word "devil" as they are, for example, the word "thousand" knows. In Mecklenburg , for example, one calls out “Dus un Düwel!” (“Thousand and Devil”) or “Potz Dus!” (“Potz Tausend”).

In the 19th century, the colloquial expressions “like a Daus”, “like a little shower” or “dressed like a little baby” were still used to describe a cute or excellent person.

supporting documents

  1. ↑ a b Lutz Röhrich: Lexicon of the proverbial sayings , 5 volumes, Freiburg i. Br. 1991; Lemma Daus in Volume 1, Page 309
  2. ↑ Evidence for the use in Middle High German in the dictionary of the Grimms
  3. ↑ a b Friedrich Kluge : Etymological dictionary of the German language , edit. by Elmar Seebold, 23rd edition Berlin, New York 1995; Lemmas "Daus 1 " and "Daus 2 ", page 164
  4. ↑ a b c d Marianne Rumpf: On the development of playing card colors in Switzerland, Germany and France . In: “Swiss Archives for Folklore” 72, 1976, pp. 1–32, doi : 10.5169 / seals-117151 .
  5. ↑ Johann Fischart: The miraculous vnerhörtest legend vnd description of the… Hütleins… , 1591, in: Das Kloster, ed. by J. Scheible, Volume 10, 2: Fischart's smaller writings, Stuttgart and Leipzig 1848, page 920; quoted here from Marianne Rumpf, page 14
  6. ↑ Rhyming chronicle about Duke Ulrich von Württemberg and his next successor , ed. by Eduard Frh. von Seckendorf, Stuttgart 1863, page 72; quoted here from Marianne Rumpf, page 13
  7. ^ Johann Leonhard Frisch: German-Latin dictionary , Berlin 1741, Volume 2, page 151; quoted here from Marianne Rumpf, page 12
  8. ^ Hellmut Rosenfeld: Munich playing cards around 1500 , Bielefeld 1958, page 11; paraphrased from Marianne Rumpf, page 13
  9. ^ Daus: Dausch in the dictionary of the Brothers Grimm.
  10. ^ Exchange in the dictionary of the Brothers Grimm
  11. ↑ Heinz Küpper: Dictionary of German colloquial language . 1st edition, 6th reprint, Stuttgart, Munich, Düsseldorf, Leipzig 1997, keyword “Daus”, p. 160
  12. ^ Johann Christoph Adelung : Grammatical-Critical Dictionary of High German Dialect , Leipzig 1793–1801; Lemma "Das Daus", Volume 1, p. 1422
  13. ^ Theodor Fontane: Effi Briest . S. 11 : "Isn't a dhow, our lady"

literature

  • Marianne Rumpf: On the development of playing card colors in Switzerland, Germany and France . In: "Swiss Archives for Folklore" 72, 1976, pp. 1–32 (for Daus, pages 11–14)

See also