A native German speaker is curious about the English word doofus, which sounds a lot like German doof, meaning “stupid” or “daft.” English doofus first appeared in the 1960s, apparently modeled after goofus, another term for a “dolt” or “stupid person.” In the Scots language, dowf or douf means “listless” or “dull.” German doof apparently derives from taub, or “deaf,” which can also describe something lacking some essential quality, such as “deaf” seeds that don’t germinate. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “English Doofus and German Doof”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, this is Verena Malo.
Where are you calling from, Verena?
I’m calling from Dallas, Texas.
What can we do for you?
Well, I was wondering, you know, I’m a German living in Texas, and I always stumbled here across a word called doofus, which for me as a German is very hilarious, because doof, written the way it is, but pronounced doof, it’s like a word for to be stupid or daft.
But, you know, children or teenagers would say this in German. And I think it’s so funny that here you have this Latin suffix, US, you know, like doofus, which makes it so big. And so I really wonder where this comes from.
Oh, yeah. It’s good that you made the connection there. So doofus reminds you of the word doof in German, which means adult or a stupid man, right?
Mm—
Right.
And that U.S. suffix probably got attached to the word because it’s modeled after a word goofus, which has approximately the same meaning, but it’s about 50 years older. It’s another English word for a stupid person. We have a lot of those in English.
Interestingly, we don’t quite know how doofus got into English in the first place. We do know that there’s a word dauf, which comes into English through Scots English, probably from Germanic roots, which meant listless or dull. And this may ring some bells for you.
And this is related to a word, a Germanic word meaning deaf, D-E-A-F, meaning that you can’t hear. I think the modern word in German is taub. Is that right?
Taub, yeah.
Taub.
Doof actually, in German, actually comes from taub. In the early 20th century in Berlin, doof was borrowed from Low German to mean stupid because death had all these other meanings. Because in some dialects of German, you could say something is, you could talk about death rocks. Like if rocks are taub, it means they have no usable minerals. Or deaf eggs means they’re unfertilized or deaf seeds mean they don’t germinate or soup without flavor could be called deaf, you know, if it’s unsavory.
And so deaf takes on more meanings than just can’t hear. It’s all about kind of lacking the essential quality, and that’s what doof kind of borrowed from the word taub in these dialect senses. But interestingly, doofus doesn’t really show up in English until the 1960s.
And yet it seems like a word that’s been in English forever. I thought that maybe it’d come here with, you know, all the immigrants who had come, especially to Texas, you know, the Verein and all this. But maybe I’m wrong.
It’s possible.
You know, before the two world wars, Germans accounted for one of the largest immigrant groups in the United States. And there were a lot of German speakers. And then the two world wars meant that German stopped being spoken as a second language among a lot of people. But it’s possible that that is how Dufus came into use in the United States, that there were still enough German speakers in the United States, even after the suppression of German as a second language.
Especially here in Texas, we have this Texas German, which now it’s not spoken anymore. We have some German words in English like Gesundheit people say and Dummkopf people probably know. But there’s also Doofkopf in German, right?
Yeah, Doofkopf is a very colloquial way of saying Dummkopf, which is dumbass or whatever you would say. Dumbhead, literally.
Yeah, Dumbhead, literally, right. But Dove Kopf, I don’t think you will find it in dictionaries. So this is really spoken language, you know, and children and teenagers’ language. And it’s not, you know, it really, it’s not very, I think people now don’t say Dove so much anymore.
So 20 years ago, now they have much more so hipster words for this.
Yeah, that’s true. It definitely came during the 20s when Berlin was this really big party town. It was part of the slang of Berlin. And Doofy as well. Doofy kind of meaning dummy was a big term then too.
Doofy, yeah, exactly. This is a really interesting question. This is just one of those, you made a really nice leap here, a connection between these two languages that nobody else probably would have made. And I really appreciate that, Verena. That’s lovely that you just made that leap for us.
Yeah. Where in Germany are you from?
From Mainz on the Rhine River.
Oh, lovely. Well, call us again sometime when you make another connection like this. We would really love to hear from you.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Take care.
Thank you for calling.
Take care.
Be well.
Yeah. Thank you for having me.
Bye-bye.
