Starting from Old High German, the "Etymological Dictionary of Old High German" examines the semantic and formal development of the vocabulary up to New High German, records the linguistic relatives within Germanic and Indo-European and reconstructs preforms. In the process, new insights are gained into the origin and genetic classification of Old High German words.
The dictionary is an important tool for comparative language research and linguistic historical research on the vocabulary of Old Germanic and Indo-European languages. The project was started in 1978 by Albert Larry Lloyd and Otto Springer, both from the University of Pennsylvania. Rosemarie Lühr has been leading the project since 1998.
Seven volumes are already published, of which volume I - V are currently available on this page. More information about this online publication can be found here.
The entire work is designed in 10 volumes, with volume 10 containing the overall index. Before it was accepted into the Academies Programme, the German Research Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities in the USA funded the project. 16031 lemmas can currently be queried via this portal.
This research project is part of the Academies Programme - currently the largest long-term research programme in the humanities and cultural sciences in the Federal Republic of Germany.