Trinkets

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Tand is an ancient name for a pretty, useless thing that has no value. The so-called " Nürnberger Tand " was the first industrially manufactured children's toy. More or less synonymous terms are knick-knacks , frippery or junk .

Word origin

The Middle High German noun tant means "chatter, nonsense". Dandling has been documented as a frequent derived from mhd. Tenten ("to drive mischief") since the 17th century, with the meaning of "teasing", "joking" or "flirting".

Tandler , Tändler , Tendler and also Dentler (mhd. Tendeler ) are occupational names in the Bavarian-Austrian area for either resident small and haberdashery traders, as well as roaming peddlers or traveling traders. In other German-speaking regions this occupational group was referred to as “junk dealers”. The term was used colloquially and mostly disparagingly, but was also included in official documents that regulated this trade.

Another origin of the term for tant is derived from the Latin tantum (“so much”) and originally referred to arithmetic pennies , each of which was worth as much as the line on which it lay.

Mention in the literature

  • In Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth , the eponymous hero (II, 3) says: All is but toys , often translated as “Everything is just trinkets”.
  • The curse of the three witches in Fontane's ballad Die Brück 'am Tay is: "Tand, Tand is the creation of human hands!"
  • In Goethe's Faust : “The junk that pushes me with a thousand trinkets, In this moth world?” (Chapter 4, verse 657)
  • In Hesse's Siddhartha, the eponymous hero thinks "greed, including property, possessions and wealth... Was no longer a game or trinket for him" (Chapter Sansara, 142).
  • In Wagner's opera Siegfried (Act I), Siegfried says to the Nibelung Mime: " Hey! What kind of idle trinket is that! " As he holds the sword forged by Mime in his hand and looks at it.
  • Jenny Erpenbeck story collection trinkets - with the cover story "trinkets" - from the 2,001th

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Duden, Volume 7: The dictionary of origin , keyword "tändeln"
  2. ↑ Churpfalzbaierisches Regierungsblatt 1805, Sp. 931: Höchst-Landesherrliche Verordnung concerning the dealers in Munich ( digitized version )
  3. ↑ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe : Faust: The tragedy first part. Night in the Gutenberg-DE project ( archive version )

Web links

Wiktionary: trinkets  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations