An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/Annotated/kurz

by Friedrich Kluge

kurz, adjective, ‘short,’ from the equivalent Middle High German and Old High German kurz; a very curious loanword from Latin curtus. What may have led to its adoption is even more obscure than in the case of sicher (from Latin securus). The assumption of its being borrowed is supported only by the form kurt (without the change of t to z), which appears also in strictly Upper German records; compare Old High German porta, pforta, and pforza, from Latin porta. The form curt is Old Saxon and Old Frisian; compare also Dutch kort and Icelandic kortr. The Latin loan-word passed by degrees into all the Teutonic dialects except English, which preserved an Old Teutonic word for ‘short’ with which the Latin word, from its close resemblance in sound, has been confused — Anglo-Saxon sceort, English short (compare Old High German skurz, ‘short’); these cannot, on account of their want of permutation, be primitively allied to Latin curtus. For the cognates of English short see Schürze.