"vorEhrfurchtErzitter"? Hoffen Sie mich!

October 16, 2007 6:52 AM

What does "vorEhrfurchtErzitter" mean? I don't speak a lick of German.

Fairly Deutsche-conversant friend stumped; machine translation not cutting the mustard*. Google finds about fifteen hits for the string, six for the string with spaces, and seven hundred or so for "Erzitter" by itself, so I'm guessing it's a bit of idiom, but I'm hopeless beyond that.

*Babelfish gives "before reverence Erzitter" as a translation for "vor Ehrfurcht Erzitter". Gosh, thanks.

posted by cortex to writing & language (18 comments total)

Must "Erzitter" be a word unto itself?

"Zitter" can mean tremble. "Er" is the 3rd person singular pronoun for "he".

-- Before reverence he trembles? Maybe.
posted by contessa at 7:02 AM on October 16, 2007

(I also acknowledge that it's completely ungrammatical German)
posted by contessa at 7:03 AM on October 16, 2007

vor Ehrfurcht erzittern : To tremble in awe.

German / English dictionary here

It's used here to describe some fish, they must be really awesome.
posted by the number 17 at 7:11 AM on October 16, 2007 [1 favorite]

But the construction "vorEhrfurchtErzitter" in obviously not used frequently in German, judging from Google results. I think it could basically mean awestruck, or more precisely an "awestruck one" (awe being one possible meaning of Ehrfurch).
posted by bluefrog at 7:18 AM on October 16, 2007

It's a badly spelled mix of two German idioms, "in Ehrfurcht erstarren" and "vor Ehrfurcht erzittern", both mean "to be awestruck", although literally in the first version the awe makes you freeze and in the second it makes you tremble.
posted by snownoid at 7:25 AM on October 16, 2007

Could be a reference to Philippians 2:12: "Schaffet daß ihr selig werdet, mit Furcht und Zittern" (work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.). Or Kierkegaard's book, the title of which is drawn from this verse.
posted by limon at 7:46 AM on October 16, 2007

Seconding snownoid, it really only makes sense if it's "erzittern" since that is the infinitive of the verb, whereas "erzitter" isn't... much of a tense at all. >_>
posted by Phire at 8:11 AM on October 16, 2007

Okay, interesting. A search for "vor ehrfurcht erzittern" does turn up a healthy few hundred hits, though the squashed together version of the "correct" variant, "vorehrfurcterzittern", turns up nothing at all.

Is the malformed version getting perpetuated (insofar as a dozen cites on various webpages is perpetuation) out of some explicable quirk of German morphology (why erzitter vs. erzittern?) or is it just odd coincidence, or what?

Context for the quote that caught my eye, by the way, was light-hearted blog commentary—more of an "oh, hey, there he is!" comment than anything relating to earnest trembling or awe or such. I get the feeling it's filling the same function as a Wayne's Worldish "we're not worthy" riff.
posted by cortex at 8:33 AM on October 16, 2007

It seems to be some form of colloquialism or chat speak for "is trembling with awe", constructed like expressions found in comic books (some people call those Erikative, but I don't think this term is used by non-nerds).

For example, where sobbing is expressed with *sob* in English, one would translate it as *schluchz* (to sob - schluchzen); likewise, *staun* is often used as indication of amazement ("staunen" means "to marvel).

So, as "to read MetaFilter" translates to "MetaFilter lesen", one could write something as "MetaFilter les" to indicate that someone is currently reading MetaFilter. Likewise, you can write something like *vor Ehrfurcht erzitter* or *fremdschäm*. With asterisks in a chat, without in a comic book.

The missing spaces? Probably an error.
posted by erdferkel at 8:35 AM on October 16, 2007

it's an Erikative, for some reason people sometimes leave out the spaces.
posted by snownoid at 8:39 AM on October 16, 2007 [1 favorite]

Either that, or a sarcastic "Oh, I'm SO scared. Yep."


Anyway, as to the Erzitter vs. Erzittern issue... Interestingly enough a few of those google search results seem to use "Vor Erfurcht Erzitter" as a noun as opposed a verb, giving the phrase a sort of "Awestruck tremble" kind of meaning.

Based on, for example,

*vordemedlenhochgeschätztenCTOCverbeug* *vorehrfurchterzitter*

and

*staun, augenaufreis, vorehrfurchterzitter*

it seems almost normal to modify a verb so that it resembles a noun and use it to indicate an action of the poster, regardless of grammatical correctness.

Which I would simply write off as netspeak, but I'm not studying linguistics, so .. *shrugs*
posted by Phire at 8:42 AM on October 16, 2007

Man. That comes together nicely; the original citing was in fact wrapped in asterisks:

*vorEhrfurchtErzitter*

Fascinating. I love the explanatory root of Erika Fuchs and "Erikative"; that's just awesome.

Thanks, everybody.
posted by cortex at 8:47 AM on October 16, 2007

A bit more on the "Inflektiv" (the official name of the Ericative), it also mentions its use in chats:

The >(<>(<>

(I'm not sure why google thinks that "Inflektiv" means ">(<-)" in English)
posted by snownoid at 8:49 AM on October 16, 2007

okay, that didn't work.


The Inflektiv took from the comic entrance to the youth language and evolved with the advent of the Internet in the language of the chat rooms to a mass phenomenon, which is called Network jargon been extended to other forms of communication such as e-mail and SMS has had. In the course of this development were also in the German-chat complex multipartite interjections in Inflektiv usual, except inflektiven verb form also set other members (with the exception of the grammatical subject ") and, in this Infinitve typical for the final position of the verb form maintained, for example sichwegduck * * , * * * or lieb-anlächel in the table edge strike *.
posted by snownoid at 8:51 AM on October 16, 2007

snownoid, email me the original of that first comment and I'll fix it in place.
posted by cortex at 8:54 AM on October 16, 2007

German has the wonderful construct of the adjectival phrase. Perhaps yours originated as such and then got run together, for instance:

"Der vor Erfurcht erzitternde Mensch..."

Badly, in English: "the trembling-with-awe man"

correctly, but less interestingly, in English: "the man, who trembled with awe"
posted by nax at 11:29 AM on October 16, 2007

"Vor Ehrfurcht Erzitter !"

it works as an imperative.
probably ancient literature or opera. think of it being yelled with scorn. "In awe shall you tremble!"

it's obscure but correct.

I feel like I should know where you found this. it sounds like something ripped from Faust (yet I doubt it is).
posted by krautland at 10:30 PM on October 17, 2007

contessa: erzitter is a verb. the er here does not indicate the masculine ("he") but is part of the verb. same meaning as the verb "zitter." to shudder.
posted by krautland at 10:31 PM on October 17, 2007