An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/Annotated/recht

by Friedrich Kluge

recht, adjective, ‘right, just,’ from Middle High German and Old High German rëht, adjective, ‘straight, right, just, correct’; common Teutonic rehta-, with equivalent meaning in all the dialects, Gothic raihts, Old Icelandic réttr, Anglo-Saxon riht, English right, Dutch regt, Old Saxon reht. Latin rectus, Zend. rā̆́šta, ‘straight, right, correct,’ are also primitively allied. This adjective, which has a participle ending to-, is usually considered to be originally a participle of the root rē̆́g, ‘to direct,’ in Latin regere; with this is also connected Sanscrit rjú, ‘straight, correct, just,’ superlat. rájišṭha, whereby the Aryan root rē̆́g is authenticated. — In the sense of ‘to or on the right’ (the antithesis of links, ‘to or on the left’), the adjective rarely occurs in Middle High German, since in the earlier period an adjective primitively allied to Latin dexter was used (compare Gothic taíhswa-, Old High German zëso, Middle High German zëse, ‘to or on the right’). —